Poured Over: Adrienne Brodeur on Little Monsters

Jenna Seery

“What part of yourself is actually in each character?”

Little Monsters by Adrienne Brodeur is a family drama set on the shores of Cape Cod, full of complicated relationships, secrets and revelations. Brodeur joined us to talk about creating her detailed characters, writing intuitively, her career in the literary world and more with Miwa Messer, host of Poured Over.

This episode of Poured Over was hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang.     

New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app.    

Featured Books (Episode):
Little Monsters by Adrienne Brodeur
Wild Game by Adrienne Brodeur
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

Featured Books (TBR Topoff):
The Great Offshore Grounds by Vanessa Veselka
Seven Steeples by Sara Baume

Full Episode Transcript

Miwa Messer
I’m Miwa Messer, I’m the producer and host of Poured Over and you know, Adrienne Brodeur’s name from her memoir from 2019, Wild Game huge hit, all of us paid attention. Everyone’s eyes got really big because, well, it’s quite a story. And we’re going to come back to that in a second. But there was a new novel called Little Monsters set on Cape Cod, and it is the July Barnes and Noble book club pick. And I’m going to tell you right now we are spoiler free in this conversation. If you want the spoilers, come join us in August, you can find the details on bn.com for that online event, and we will be full of spoilers in that conversation. But here, we’re gonna hold some cards close. But Adrienne, thank you so much for joining us on the show.

Adrienne Brodeur
Thank you much for having me. And I’m going to do my best in this secret laden book, not anything away, but I might mess up.

MM
Well, the good news is, too we have an editor.

AB
Excellent. I love the editors.

MM
But you know, I was thinking about it. Over the last couple of weeks, as I’ve been prepping for the show. And part of me wonders, you know, you’ve got this marvelous Vivian Gornick line that you cited quite often when you’re talking about Little Monsters, and I mean, she’s Vivian Gornick. Of course, you’re gonna cite Vivian Gornick. But for the drama to deepen, we must see the loneliness of the monster and the cunning of the innocent. And of course, Little Monsters being the title of the novel, part of me is wondering, would you have been able to write Little Monsters if you hadn’t written Wild Game first?

You know, I have no idea. But I will say that there are similarities between what intrigued me about my own story and what was very fun and delightful about writing about a fictional family’s secrets. So I’m also very attuned to the gray areas of character. And when I had read that, quote, by Vivian Gornick, while I was working on Wild Game, I mean, I taped it to my computer, and it was my North Star. And I’d say, you know, I still feel the same way I feel like, everything I’m curious about is the gray zone. I’m not interested in heroes and villains. I’m all about what is sort of corrupt and courageous in every single character

And you deliver, you deliver in the Gardner family. So we’ve got dad, Alex. And we’ve got his two children who are adults, Abby and Ken. And Ken is married with two children, Abby is single by choice.. Before we get too deep into the characters, I’d really like you to sort of describe Cape Cod for folks who are not necessarily familiar with sort of the year round life on the Cape, I think there are plenty of people who have been to the Cape, obviously, you know, for summers, or a week or whatever. But year-round community on the Cape is really different and that’s the world your characters are part of.

It’s true. I mean, Cape Cod, to me is just such a fascinating landscape. I have not lived there year-round, but I’ve spent every summer of my life there. And I spend time throughout the year because I’m fortunate enough to have a small cabin or cottage on the Cape. But I mean, it is a place of privilege. Obviously, a lot of people come to summer or spend vacations. But it is also a place where people live. But I think always the thing that moves me most about Cape Cod is the natural world there. There is something so powerful about it for me. And I think that comes from the essential fragility of the land. I mean, in essence, it’s a sandbar, we all know that it’s going to disappear. And each year you see chunks of beach gone, you see rocks moved, but like hour by hour and minute by minute with the light with the seasons with the tides just the views change all the time. And it’s spectacularly beautiful and bountiful. I love to fish and clam and harvest the land. So, you know, it’s just a pleasure for me to write about it because I experience it with all my senses.

And I think too, the Gardners share that. I mean, Ken might be a little mad that it seems that erosion is coming for his very fancy landscaped lawn. But they do, they’re grounded in this place and they have this place. I think it really matters because they are a little flinty, and I like plenty characters, but they’re flinty family. They are not the easiest to get to know they have expectations. Adam, he makes a really serious decision early on. This is not a small thing that Adam decides to do.

And what I’d say is when I started this novel, I wanted there to be something big at stake for every member of the Gardner family, and it’s a small family, it’s a father and two adult children, the mother died long ago. There’s a big moment on the horizon for each of them. So for Adam Gardner, who’s the patriarch, and a renowned marine biologist, he’s about to turn 70. And he’s kind of obsessed with his relevancy and an I shouldn’t say fading relevancy. So he’s very determined that he wants to make some kind of scientific breakthrough that will ensure his legacy, what we don’t know upfront is, and each of these characters is also balancing a secret. He has bipolar disorder, and he has made the conscious decision to go down on his medication and to supplement it with his with his own ideas for what will help him in that way, what he’s trying to do is connect the dots, that his mind is delivering him all these elusive little ideas and thoughts. He feels that his brain, once it’s not anesthetized by the bipolar medication will be able to make these connections, and he will have his big discovery. And he is very convinced he’s on the brink of cracking the code of whale language.

He is a complicated guy.

He is a complicated guy, they all are complicated people,

Which I appreciate. absolutely appreciate. It’s a heck of an opening. The way you do it with these tiny details. He’s meeting a new doctor, he’s unimpressed with the doctors, new socks, he’s unimpressed with everything. He’s very much a guy of his time and of his place. And you have set this novel on Cape Cod, with these characters in the summer of 2016, which I think is a pretty great stylistic choice, especially for what you’re doing. So can we talk about that decision that you made?

Absolutely. You know, I was working on another book in 2016. That was during the Wild Game times in my own life. I felt like there was an uneasy mood in the country that just felt palpable, and riveting to me, I think you could practically sense that the ground was shifting. And even though I am no political historian or sociologist, I mean, it was really It felt like a global in fact, inflection point, and it sort of marked the collapse of an established order and sort of this perfect storm, which enabled some people to reckon with their history and forced other people into deeper denial. But I just remember at that time, even though I was fully one of the people who thought the world was going in one direction, which it did not remember, at that time thinking a little bit, I didn’t have the idea for the novel yet. But I remember just thinking it would be a fascinating moment to set a novel and in no small part because I love the idea of readers knowing more than characters. And so, it was really thrilling to all the time have these characters, you know, who were either excited about Hillary about to become president or the way the world was going? That’s not what happened.

Did you start with the timeframe in the place? Or did you start with this family? Because this family feels very fully formed.

Yeah, it’s interesting. I mean, I feel like I could talk endlessly about the creative process and yet it would be still hard to grasp. So, I came back from you know, I was sent home from tour in March of 2020, just like the world. And I think what I do, or what I now, you know, a couple books in recognize about myself is I start noticing what I notice, just really where my subconscious goes, where this brain keeps landing. Why is it landing there, but I just, I pay really close attention. It’s not like I ever come up and think I’m going to write a family drama set in 2016 about X, Y, or Z. It’s just so one of the things that I kept noticing. I was curious about siblings. I was curious about sibling rivalry. I have a lot of friends who have complicated relationships with their brothers or sisters. I, in my own life, have had numerous step siblings. I have a biological brother. Both my parents had half siblings that they didn’t know about. that was where my head went. And so I decided to go to the original sibling story of all time Cain and Abel, guess what that story has nothing like there is no there. There’s such a slim, slim tale. And I remember being sort of, you know, gravely disappointed Yeah, everyone gives gifts father likes one more the other where does this murder come from? And then of course, I realized— not right away. But if there was one thing I took from that it was the structure. So there is this moment and my novel is the propulsion, the going forward is all about getting to Adam’s 70th birthday party, where each of these character plans to reveal something quite large and there will be the perception or reality that the father favors one gift over the other. So that’s what I that’s what I took from Cain and Abel. But in terms of use, you mentioned that the character seemed fully formed, the only character who was completely fully formed and it just seems so odd, was Adam, I mean, I could put my hands over the keyboard and channel that man, that 70 year old, bipolar, cantankerous, grandiose, depressed, we can name it, he was so easy for me, the rest of them was much more as you know, you would expect that you, you have to write quite far into your book to understand people’s motivation and to, you know, kind of hold things tightly, but you need to not have the lid on so tight that unexpected things can’t happen. And what a character does on any given page, you know, you need to be surprised to so I had to write quite far for everyone else, but not for Adam.

When you say write really far— are we talking halfway? Are we talking like, how far away?

I’d say halfway, and then they come into their own and then you obviously need to go back with your new knowledge of well, why is Ken wounded, okay, if he’s wounded about you know, being a fat kid didn’t really discover that till 150, you’re gonna have to go back and sprinkle some of that in.

Let’s start with Ken actually, he is very complicated guy, again, also very recognizable. Right? Here’s a guy who has finally found success, but he always has this little edge, where he’s thinking, well, now I’m finally better than so and so like, he just can’t live. He’s always in competition. And it’s not just with his sister. It’s not just with his he is in competition with the world. I mean, there are a couple of points to as twin daughters, and there are a couple of points where I’m like, are you actually competing with your 13 year olds? You are? Oh, wow, you are but yet, he’s not a genuinely malicious guy. He is very complicated. He has layers, there were times where he got on a nerve, which tells me I’m talking about a fictional character like a real person again.

Thank you.

But for you living with a guy like this, I kept thinking about all of the times you said, you know, empathy was the thing that you came away from after writing wild game. Yeah, writing about your very complicated mother. And Ken is really the character that represented that for me in this novel, where you really had to have a lot of empathy as the writer because otherwise,

And I do have empathy for him. Well, I’ll back up and say I have empathy for a lot of men who in recent years had to come to terms with their own privilege and place in this world and think about that song. But I had a lot of empathy, in particular for Ken, because he’s by far in the way the most wounded character in this book. And humans are like all other creatures, they are at their most aggressive when they’re wounded. And I really held the Vivian Gornick quote in my mind as I was writing him and thinking about him, but one thing that was really helpful was actually putting him seeing him in his therapist office. And so we could discover some of these wounds. And you know, he lost his mother as a young boy, you know, that first female abandonment. He loved his sister too much because his father was kind of crazy and not on the scene. So, you know, even though the sister was younger, they formed this very tight bond, and he just adored her, and then she became an adolescent and turned away from him and his good friend as a boyfriend in the process. So he felt all these abandonments and it just grew into this rage, this wanting to succeed the singular determination, which I think we’ve all seen in a lot of people and yet there is the vulnerable little boy in there somewhere that, you know, you keep trying to get to? And hopefully you saw a little bit of that at the end.

Yeah, I mean, everyone gets their arc. Yes, everyone gets their arc, it’s a complete arc. And the way you balance perspectives, and you know, we’ve also got an outsider who comes sort of trotting up gently, and she’s a whole, I’m quite fond of that character, I’m very fond of how you worked her in and gave her space to be the outsider that she is. And that’s kind of all we’re gonna say there, because she’s an excellent addition. And I just the structure of the book, though, so much happens in a rather compressed timeline. I mean, you take us from what, April through October when I think about how much happened? Yeah, in this story, and what these characters go through, I mean, I love the device of the party. And everyone’s moving towards this party, because you know, this is supposed to be fun. And so structurally did you know when you sat down to do this, that you were going to need to alternate POVs and give yourself I know, you’re based it on the sort of story structure of Cain and Abel, but you still have to give the Gardners their space, you still have to give Adrienne the novelist her space. I mean, right, the inspiration.

You know, I am a pretty intuitive writer. And I don’t know if that’s because I don’t have an MFA or because I feel like most of what I’ve learned about writing is from reading and being an editor, but I do know that after writing memoir, and being in this head, and this head alone, it was so fun, and so exciting to be in that really super close third person, you know, in the brains of those characters. At first, I thought it was just going to be the father and the two children, and then the outsider staff as she comes in. And then, you know, I found that I was curious about other people. And so you know, gave Jenny who’s Ken’s wife, a few bits, at one point I gave the therapist and then I got too far afield and scaled back and pulled it again, I think what I find so interesting, is on some level, all of these characters are so kind of sure, you know, as we all are in our thoughts, well, that person smiled at me funny because they must have been thinking that or this or the other. And the fact is, by being able to go into all of these perspectives, it was easy to show how everyone is wrong about the others.

I love Jenny as a character we meet her, late in the game. Oh, well, I’m glad you let her in. Because I mean, she just surprised me. And so it and the shredding of the fret sheets. The cast felt like it was the perfect size, though. It really did it just it felt like I was never spending too much time in one POV. And I liked having that ground shift. For me as a reader, there were a couple of points where I felt very sure I knew where something was going. And then I was like, Oh, I clearly Okay. Abby also made some choices that I was like, Okay, that’s good. Excellent. To hear that. Not what I expected. But I’m quite delighted because they’re very Abby things, right? They’re very true to who I think you’ve given us as a character.

And it’s like, okay, it is fun, as the writer at this early stage, to actually hear what is exciting to a reader because, you know, it’s before I’ve really talked about the book before I’ve, you know, a lot of people have read it. So it’s kind of like I’m all perked up thinking, okay, she’s into, you know, it’s just fascinating.

It’s fun. I mean, here’s the thing, reading a book for the first time, right, is one— really, really fun. And also, I like sitting with someone’s body of work. Now I have to admit, I have not read your very, very first novel from the early aughts. Slightly more comic than everything, though, you are very funny. And you have these very wry, I like to think of them as New England moments, being an ex-New Englander myself, but I don’t think we can lay claim to it entirely. You have a very wry sense of humor, but seeing Wild Game and Little Monsters, your sentences are great. You have a sense of character that I really appreciate because you like that gray area, right? And because you can have empathy for the complicated people, because I think it would be really easy to just sort of choose sides, right? Yeah. No, sit down to write and you choose a side and it’s like, ooh, but is that fun to read? Not so much.

Yeah. No, I agree with you there.

So how much of that is sort of your old editorial hat though, because you did work in book publishing for a really long time before you flipped sides. And also Zoetrope magazine, you were one of the founders of that quite great literary magazine, which still publishes. So you’re doing all of these sorts of other bits and pieces before you sit down to do the work yourself. But I don’t think you ever really walk away from being an editor. I think it does shape the way you see story. And I’m wondering if that is true for you.

That’s so interesting. I have not thought about it that way. But I am sure you are right. And I have remained in the literary world, although I’m not an editor anymore, I run a nonprofit called Aspen Words, which is a program at the Aspen Institute. But I do think it’s interesting that it really was when I stepped away from editing that I was able to write, because I think it takes so much to sort of put your hands in the dough of someone else’s work. One of the things that’s been most helpful for me in terms of making space for my writing, and figuring out my writing, has been to sort of shift my paradigm away from how am I ever going to fit this into my life. You know, I’m a mother, I’m a daughter, I have a job that I love. That’s kind of big, and all those things. But I think of writing as such a privilege, and it’s the one thing I do for myself. So I am one of those people, you know, which does not mean it’s easy, which does not mean I’m just smiling as I type. I mean, it’s complicated, but it is like, you know, for all of you who exercise or meditate or something, you know, we can only make time for so much. But this actually makes me feel better. And when I’m not doing it, you know, I tend to feel like there’s something missing in my life. I mean, I haven’t been writing the last few months, because I’ve been so busy sort of participating in the publishing and I find myself hungry to go back this the way I imagine, you know, anyone who exercise daily feels horrible, not doing it for a few weeks.

Okay, but let’s shout out your editor for a second. She has very good taste.

I adore my editor so much. And we actually knew each other before she bought Wild Game and I remember she and I had a lunch. And she was a friend and we worked together at Houghton Mifflin. And I remember talking to her and I was like, you know, my agent shouldn’t sit and do this. And she’s like, No, absolutely not, that would not be the wise thing to do. And we sort of nodded, we just agreed on this. And then we got up to leave the restaurant and she turned around and she’s like, No, Adrienne, send it to me and I did. And it was just the best decision ever. And I just feel so grateful and happy that Little Monsters landed with her as well, because she’s an editor’s editor, she understands the business and knows how to launch something. But she’s also just she gets so deep in the book, you and I knew that I wanted someone to work with me on the words, not just, you know, pushing it out into the world.

And especially to I could see how there might be a temptation to let the plot parts drive what you’re trying to do. But the characters yourself, like everyone got under my skin and in the ways that you want a fictional character to get under your skin. And you know that constant sort of, would I do that? No, I would not do that and yeah.

And the characters 100% drove the plot, even though, you know, there was this device of working towards the party. It was the characters who, who sort of pushed that along. And also, I had no idea going into that party, how to unwind the book. And I was surprised by what happened in the end, which was great fun.

It was very satisfying. Very satisfying ending.

Thank you.

When I think about Frankenstein for a second because you do Frankenstein pops up in unexpected ways in Little Monsters, and I liked the way it shows up. But I do want to talk about some of your literary influences because again, you’ve been an editor you work in books now you’ve worked in literary magazines, I mean, all of this. And you have always said, read as if everything matters because it does and I love I love that idea. I really, I love that whole idea of you’ve just got to read as widely as possible. But can we talk about literary influences for a second? There have to be a few that you hold close.

I mean, I read voraciously I didn’t always— I was not the kid with the flashlight under the mattress. I had a television in my room as a kid. I don’t know why any parent would do that. But I just, yes, that person, I really became a voracious reader in my early 20s in a small part, because my stepmother was a bookstore owner, and she would just press incredible books into my hands. And I still remember those first. I mean, Jim Harrison, Barbara Kingsolver and at the same time, you know, I also got into reading in high school but the very high drama The sort of Heart of Darkness, Anna Karenina, both my parents were writers of different sorts. My father wrote fiction, but he was also a journalist and wrote for The New Yorker for years and years and years, staff writer there, my mother wrote food and travel pieces. So I think in that, that way of separation, I was like, not doing that I’m going my own way. I went in an entirely different directions, sort of a “save the world” public policy type of thing and then realized, you know, that the political journals were always going down on the bedside were the literary journals, going up, and I just started reading and reading and reading. I love poetry, and I always read poetry just a little bit, can’t do too much. But I read poetry regularly for language for inspiration that way, you know, Mary Oliver is obviously with Cape Cod, you know, she’s a kindred spirit, Auden reliably brings me to tears every time. I love Jericho Brown, Ada Limon, Tracy K. Smith, I’m just thinking of how they get to what’s essential in their poems. I am a huge devotee of family dramas. Obviously, I love memoir, but I also just love any family drama. So The Prince of Tides, I just finished The Covenant of Water, I’m waiting for Tayari Jones is next book.

Right there with you right there, on the edge of my seat waiting for that Tayari Jones.

Ann Patchett, Elizabeth McCracken. So the north star book changes, you know, regularly, I feel like I’m part of a conversation with many, many authors, you know, that we all sort of right, when we admire bits that they done so well in their books, I feel so grateful that I really found and discovered, and was able to turn away from my political career, right, and just race back towards publishing, which I’ve really been in since my late 20s. And, you know, I’ve had had a wonderful career, I mean, really have enjoyed, you know, I’ve never been bored a moment. Right?

That’s the thing about books like, that’s the thing about there is no way to be bored, I get excited thinking about it.

I mean, this is one of the things I do for Aspen Words is we have an annual literary prize of the Aspen awards literary prize. And it’s for a work of fiction that sheds light on a social issue. And so every year I read, you know, the long list, which is, you know, 10 to 20 books that are just so wonderful, and by some debut author, some established authors, but I really love and my literary career outside of writing has really always been about discovery and discovering new voices.

Right, that talent development, it’s great when you’re right, but sometimes, you know, you think of this is the one, then you have failure to launch. mention any of that, but there are times I, in my previous life, I was the director of the Discover Great New Writers program here. And I mean, there were times where I would get so excited about an novel and this is, this is going to be it and then the universe did not agree.

It takes a certain amount of fairy dust for something to take off and it’s a process.

And when you’re right, it’s glorious. And when the stars align, and everything just happens in all of the ways that you can hope. And then readers are walking around saying, Oh, this one this one? Yeah, I get really excited just thinking about the whole process. And but the reality is that as much as I believe there is a book for every reader, which I genuinely, genuinely believe that making the noise is a little harder than I would like.

That’s for sure. It’s complicated.

And it’s complicated for the people who are writing reviews and it’s complicated for outlets, and it’s just, I sort of miss that moment where, you know, you could just stumble across something in some paper or some journal and it just feels like that’s the same voices over again. Yeah, and I miss that serendipity. I kind of miss that serendipity of Oh, who are you?

Well, and hopefully it’s happening a little bit via social media where people are just, you know, have this sort of able to express you know, bookstagrammerrs and so on then you find people who are aligned with your taste, but there are so few papers compared to 20 years ago when writing you just pored over them.

It’s just that stumbling across things to where you would find something sort of off the book page and think, Hmm, you need to read you know. Do you miss the Gardners?

No. I mean, I had a good long run with them. I was with them from 2020 and I will be with them through this book tour. And, you know, I mean, I’m sure you know this so well, but the book you write is never the book anyone else reads like we’ve all read a different book so people will be telling me what they took away from this family for a long time. And although I’m not ready to talk about it, I have been noticing my brain landing and landing and landing in a little spot that’s got a different family or in different people that’s populating it. So I’m sort of thinking about moving on I haven’t started writing yet but it’s a nice feeling to notice this notice it feels like Mary Oliver said it best she said “Pay attention be astonished. Write about it.”

Love that and lucky us, you take that advice. Luckily you want to go back to the Gardner’s for a second though because I do part of me wonders if they’re okay. Right like I’m pretty sure Abby’s okay, right? I’m pretty sure Jenny’s okay. I think Ken’s gonna be okay in the long run. And Adam, I’m like, Oh,

well, I think Adams got to let go of the dream. I mean, I’m looking ahead in Adams life, but I think I don’t I think it’s never easy to get old. I think it’s hard to have your relevance and importance sort of fade, especially when you’ve been, you know, a contender. And I think these are hard life lessons. This might be a bit about having taken care of. I’m in the process of taking care of elderly people. But it’s, it’s really difficult. It is so hard to get old. And I think, you know, probably in your 70s and 80s, you are really aware of what’s ahead. I hope Adam can find some peace.

Would you ever write about them? Like I sort of feel like you’re done that this is this is the story you needed to tell and we’re good.

This particular moment in their life is complete. I mean, when I think of who has stuff left to say, I feel like Jenny’s got some things she might want to talk about. Although I haven’t really thought about that yet. Maybe one of those twins is going to show up again. Who knows, it’s it is a mystery how it all works.

Those girls, aren’t they? They’re good characters. They’re really, really good characters. Thank you. Can we go back to the process for a second, though? Absolutely. Because I mean, we’ve talked about the literary inspiration. But I really do want to talk about the work because again, there was never a point where I felt like I could see it partially comes from reading a lot, right? Like sometimes you can see where someone had to sort of pivot where they weren’t planning to, or maybe needed just a little extra, you know, but how much of the writing for you is rewriting how much of the actual book Little Monsters that were holding isn’t what you planned?

That’s a great question that, you know, everyone writes so differently. I am one of the people who believe in discipline, sort of, above all else.

I don’t go chasing the muse.

I sit down in the same place at the same time every day and wait for her to catch up. But once I am engaged once the concept is sort of in my head, it is all I think about. And so every conversation every sappy TV commercial, every book, I read every conversation I overhear, it all contributes. So it’s a very holistic feeling of writing. So the writing doesn’t just take place during the two hours. I mean, if I get up from five and I write to seven before the household wakes up, a lot of work happens then but a lot of work happens when I’m reading or when I’m taking a walk and, and I feel like especially with fiction because like with memoir, you know, you still have to have great instincts and good writing chops and everything else to write a great book. But with fiction, you also have to allow for this elusive, crazy creative process to take place and I liken it it feels Like, you know that feeling when you when you wake up in the morning and you know you’ve had a dream and you just like it’s just out of your grasp, like, that is the way I feel almost all the time. I wish I were someone who did the right the sloppy draft and go back and get the bejesus out of it. Right? I am not okay. It’s not that it ever comes out perfect on the first draft, like no way. I write very slowly, you know, when people talk about their 10,000 word days, or even 1000 word days, I just want to shoot them because I’m probably on my best day, you know, I write one page, possibly too often I like, delete two pages, okay, but I feel like until I have a solid foundation, a foundation, like I’m more of an architect, if I know that this foundation is going to hold the first floor, then I can proceed. And if it still feels wobbly, and uncertain, like I just have to shore it up. It doesn’t need to be perfect in terms of language yet, it needs to be solid so it can, it can withstand everything I’m going to build on top of it that makes sense. But no, that’s how it feels for me. So often, I start with kind of slim chapters that I that I build out. I’m neither a big outliner or but I’m also not one of those people who just writes down every rabbit hole and has a 3000-page manuscript, but then they find the gems in it. I don’t know what I am.

Like you I enjoy a good family story. But I do need a family story to be well told. I mean, yes, there are, you know, man dies when we get there are certain sort of story elements, right that there a guy walks into a bar, a woman leaves her husband like. So if you’re going to use a family story as a framework. It helps to remember, you’re still building a world, right? Like, I feel like we’ve totally let that language be co-opted by very specifically science fiction and fantasy. Like it doesn’t have to have robots to be a world, world building. I mean, if I buy into what you’re giving me, right, like, I have not been to the Cape in a million years. But there are elements that are recognizable to me as the Cape, certainly. But also, there are just plenty of elements that I recognize, because you’ve written about a piece of the world that I know enough about the humanity of your characters, right? I’m like, oh, I get up. And then I don’t and then I do and then I die. Because that’s the joy of reading, right? Like you’re on a journey with these people. And as much as you’ve given us the additional knowledge that they do not have, which is part of the fun there. I’m very grounded in the world of Little Monsters. I’m very, very grounded in these people. And I’m grounded in the setting, and I’m grounded in what you’re doing as the narrative voice. Even when I had moments where I was like, I need to pump this person. Yes, we need to pump this person. This behavior is atrocious, but true to the story, familiar to. And again, we will have a larger conversation, obviously, with book club when we can do spoilers, because there are a couple of things I’d really like to ask you about as the writer, so I’m going to try and dance around it. Before I let you get back to things because I realize we’re, of course running out of time. But for you when you’re sitting with this, right. And obviously, there are big cultural and social themes that you’re playing with. And I’m not I’m not going to go into it here, but some of it is represented by Ken some of it is represented by Abby, but everyone has, shall we say a larger social conflict. And certainly, your day job with the Aspen literary prize and working in that social space, right? The social affection space. How do you though, as the writer just let the characters in the story go where it needs to go? Because clearly, there’s always stuff happening in the back of your brain like between you noticing everything right and reading everything. There seems like there’s always a slow burn in the back of your brain. So right you just let the work be the work.

You know, I do think it’s in this elusive amorphous I’m not sure what the right word is. But this state of, of both leading and being led being to be led by your characters trusting them. I mean, there is really something about trusting the process, which sounds so woowoo and wacky and I remember just how much I used to hate when someone would Talk about well, their character told them we’re just like, Oh my God. I mean, there’s truth to it, you have to be your best self, you have to be in control and open. One of the things that I find interesting is, I feel like readers a lot of times want to know, who’s your character is your character modelled on someone or something like that. And the fact is, you know, even if you have that at the beginning of the book, and your thought, like, okay, he can be like, the grumpy librarian or something. So quickly, if you’re writing deeply, and well, and immersively, they do become something more I also think, you know, one of the hidden truths is, it’s like, what part of yourself is actually in each character? Because I gotta tell you, there are bits of me and Abby, Adam, and Ken and stuff like Jenny, I am all over each of them much more so than I could say, well, Jenny is my third cousin, you know, it’s something.

I also find it funny when people say, well, such and such characters me and I’m like, Okay, you think whatever you need to think I’m pretty sure that’s probably not the case. Because I mean, do you spend enough time talking to writers and they’re like, Yeah, I just did a thing. And it’s kind of delightful watching people set or everyone brings what they are going to bring, everyone brings

Literally one family member, who I will just say adore. And in, they never came into my head at all, in writing this book was like, I saw what you did with me on, you know, very minor computer. And I was like, Oh, okay. If you think that that’s great.

Okay, I realize, yeah, and like I said, earlier, we are, of course, running out of time, but I really liked stuff. And I just want to drop her in to this piece. And I know she has, you know, her outsider status. But did she surprise you at all? Or did you just kind of know that she was just going to get in there and kind of upset.

And she is the outsider and has the outsider perspective. So she can see this family much better than they can see themselves, which I really loved about her sort of almost thought she might be what a reader might be in some ways, but I, the thing that surprised me about her. And what I loved about her was she sort of illustrated how we are all born into families. And we all tend to follow the rules and the structure of our families. And she was just a tough cookie, who was kind of questioning that why do we have to? I don’t think so. So she was fun.

I’m glad I met her too. I’m not sure. Well, you know, we’re going to find out at book club. We’re gonna totally find out at book club, you and I get to have a total— this is kind of the fun of the thing. It’s like, every time you read something, you get to have a different conversation. You know, that’s the fun of a book club. So, if you’re not in a book club, come join us. Anyway, Adrienne Brodeur, it was so lovely to have this time with you. Thank you so much. And thank you for Little Monsters and Wild Game and, you know, wow, wow. But before I really let you go, while you sort of hinted there was something next, I suppose I can’t…

You can’t do that. But I’ll say thank you to Barnes and Noble for picking this book. I am so grateful. But I also just will say you guys have been there through every step in my career at different moments, the Discover New Writers with my first novel, events with my second and this with this book, so I’m so grateful— you do a lot for readers and writers.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Poured Over