Join us on January 12, 2019 for the first in a 3 part dinner series: “What Would Happen if One Woman Told The Truth About Her Life?” This question is based on the words from feminist poet Muriel Rukeyser’s poem Kathe Kollwitz.
Join us on January 12, 2019 for the first in a 3 part dinner series: “What Would Happen if One Woman Told The Truth About Her Life?” This question is based on the words from feminist poet Muriel Rukeyser’s poem Kathe Kollwitz.
Join us on January 12, 2019 for the first in a 3 part dinner series: “What Would Happen if One Woman Told The Truth About Her Life?” This question is based on the words from feminist poet Muriel Rukeyser’s poem Kathe Kollwitz.
Join us on January 12, 2019 for the first in a 3 part dinner series: “What Would Happen if One Woman Told The Truth About Her Life?” This question is based on the words from feminist poet Muriel Rukeyser’s poem Kathe Kollwitz.
When Changing Nothing, Changes Everything: The Power of Reframing Your Life
When Changing Nothing, Changes Everything: The Power of Reframing Your Life
Welcome to the kickoff of the Happy Women Novel Book Club!
We will be reading feel-good novels that can uplift our spirits as we quarantine at home.
Welcome to the kickoff of the Happy Women Novel Book Club!
We will be reading feel-good novels that can uplift our spirits as we quarantine at home.
“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open” - Muriel Rukeyser
“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open” - Muriel Rukeyser
“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open” - Muriel Rukeyser
February 13, 2020 in the Mount Pleasant suburb of Charleston
Dinner Event with Adrienne Brodeur
Wild Game:
My Mother, Her Lover, and Me
Entertainment Weekly 40 Biggest Books of the Season
People Magazine Best Books of the Fall
An NPR On Point’s Best Read of Fall 2019
BookPage Fall 2019 Most Anticipated Nonfiction
Vogue 1st serial excerpt
A Book of the Month Club September Pick
The Nervous Breakdown October Book Club Pick
Bookish “Kelly’s Pick” – Fall 2019
When Adrienne Brodeur turned 14 years old, her mother, Malabar told a secret that would forever change their relationship. As Brodeur writes in her highly anticipated memoir Wild Game, 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 doomed marriage of her own, and then into a deep depression. Only years later did she find the strength to embrace her life — and her mother — on her own terms.
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Brodeur, a longtime book editor who’s worked in the literary sphere for years, has generated quite the hype with her memoir. Rights were acquired by the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in the seven figures, beating out 14 publishing houses. Kelly Fremon Craig, the director of Edge of Seventeen, has preemptively bought the film rights with a script already completed.
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“There came a point in my life when it became clear that playing [my story] for laughs undermined the pain I was in and had caused others,” Brodeur tells EW. “It was then that I found a more authentic voice and decided to reckon with the truth of it head on, as a memoir.”
Citing such award-winning authors as Joan Didion and Mary Karr and poets like Tracy K. Smith David Canfield and the late Mary Oliver as inspirations, Brodeur says writing Wild Game helped her come to terms with what happened between her and her mother. “Even though my mother’s narcissism has been a destructive force in my life, I’ve always felt deeply compassionate toward her. In my childhood, it was normal to put her needs before my own and protect her secrets,” she says. “Lightbulbs went off
in my head as I entered adulthood, but it wasn’t until I became a mother myself, holding my own daughter in my arms, that I understood the depth of my mother’s betrayal and its profound impact on my life. Writing Wild Game allowed connections to emerge, lighting up the order of happenings and enabling me to make sense of how I became me. It also helped me to forgive her.”
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Adrienne Brodeur has an illustrious literary background: she co-founded (with Francis Ford Coppola) and edited the National Magazine Award-winning Zoetrope: All-Story; has served as a judge for the National Book Awards and the National Magazine Award; was an editor at HMH for many years; and currently directs Aspen Words, which bequeaths an annual award of $35,000 for an influential work of fiction. Her father was a veteran New Yorker writer, and her mother was a food and travel writer who published several cookbooks and wrote for the New York Times, among others.
All tickets include a signed copy of Adrienne's book, Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me plus dinner and Adrienne's interactive presentation.
February 13, 2020
6:00 - 6:30 pm
Arrival and Book Signing
6:30 - 7:30 pm
Delicious Organic Dinner
7:30 - 8:30 pm
Interactive Presentation and Q & A with Adrienne Brodeur
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Reserve!
$100 per person. Space limited to 35 women. Reserve now!
Email jill@happywomendinners.com to make your reservation!
This event is being held at a private home in the Mount Pleasant suburb of Charleston
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“Shocking, poignant, unputdownable.”
—People Magazine
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“Highly anticipated…. Adrienne Brodeur’s twisted mother-daughter story could be the next big memoir.”
—Entertainment Weekly
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“Wild Game is Brodeur’s unbelievable memoir of the toll this secret took on her life, and believe me—if you don’t read this one, you will be out of the loop.”
—BookPage
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“This page turning memoir … reads like heady beach fiction… This layered narrative of deceit, denial, and disillusionment is a surefire bestseller.”
—Publishers Weekly, STARRED
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“Brodeur’s story explores the bond between mother and daughter and the ripple effect a family secret can have when passed among generations. Highly recommended.”
—Library Journal, STARRED
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“A candid, deftly crafted narrative … a vivid chronicle of a daughter’s struggle to find herself.”
—Kirkus Reviews