Wild Game

I’m not a big nonfiction reader, but I devoured Wild Game (pun intended). As a mother of three kids, I’m acutely aware of the role I have in their life and appreciate the sacred gift to usher them into adulthood. Maybe that explains my shock and utter dismay over this true story of the author Adrienne’s relationship with her mother, Malabar. The ways in which Malabar repeatedly crossed lines that should never be crossed was unconscionable.

In Wild Game, Malabar pursues an affair with her disabled husband’s best friend, using her daughter, Adrienne, as a distraction, confidante, and accomplice to keep her relationship a secret and ensure its success. Adrienne’s desire to protect her mother—a deeply flawed but undeniably magnetic woman—and her blindness to the inappropriateness of her mother’s actions is heart-wrenching. I was dumbfounded at the manipulation and selfishness of Adrienne’s mother.

Wild Game is sure to be one of 2019’s must-read memoirs, and fans of The Glass Castle and Educated will love that it is similarly compulsively readable. I read it in 24 hours and am still thinking about it weeks later. Adrienne’s mother is as enigmatic as she is selfish—how could anyone act like this? You’ll be talking about just that with friends, strangers—anyone who will listen—for a long time.

On a hot July night on Cape Cod when Adrienne was fourteen, her mother, Malabar, woke her at midnight with five simple words that would set the course of both of their lives for years to come: Ben Souther just kissed me.

Adrienne instantly became her mother’s confidante and helpmate, blossoming in the sudden light of her attention, and from then on, Malabar came to rely on her daughter to help orchestrate what would become an epic affair with her husband’s closest friend. The affair would have calamitous consequences for everyone involved, impacting Adrienne’s life in profound ways, driving her into a precarious marriage of her own, and then into a deep depression. Only years later will she find the strength to embrace her life—and her mother—on her own terms.