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A review by willowbiblio
Little Monsters by Adrienne Brodeur
3.0
"But the question you must as yourself is: How well is your mask working for you now? Protection can exact a steep price."
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I started out liking this a lot, but I think it lost me somewhere along the way. At first I thought the descriptions of grandiosity and paranoia during Adam's mania were spot-on, but then I realized Brodeur had made bipolar his defining character trait. It felt dated to use mental illness in such a way, that it was what made him bad and a bad father.
I do think unlikeable characters are necessary, but it felt at times like Adam & Ken's (and the rest of the men) misogyny and awfulness was overplayed. I suppose it didn't make sense to me to be dealing with such intense subject matter but make the main male characters such loathsome people. Even David, Abby's love interest, was awful.
Brodeur chose to pin the sibling dynamic on childhood sexual abuse by another child and somewhat touched on that complexity but I didn't feel like it was authentic, or I suppose the ending confused me. If Abby was unveiling the truth of her abuse, why didn't it resound more?
Adam and Michael(Steph's dad) acted as foils, but again I was missing something from Steph. I think maybe this just wasn't the novel for me because of the handling of the subject matter.
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I started out liking this a lot, but I think it lost me somewhere along the way. At first I thought the descriptions of grandiosity and paranoia during Adam's mania were spot-on, but then I realized Brodeur had made bipolar his defining character trait. It felt dated to use mental illness in such a way, that it was what made him bad and a bad father.
I do think unlikeable characters are necessary, but it felt at times like Adam & Ken's (and the rest of the men) misogyny and awfulness was overplayed. I suppose it didn't make sense to me to be dealing with such intense subject matter but make the main male characters such loathsome people. Even David, Abby's love interest, was awful.
Brodeur chose to pin the sibling dynamic on childhood sexual abuse by another child and somewhat touched on that complexity but I didn't feel like it was authentic, or I suppose the ending confused me. If Abby was unveiling the truth of her abuse, why didn't it resound more?
Adam and Michael(Steph's dad) acted as foils, but again I was missing something from Steph. I think maybe this just wasn't the novel for me because of the handling of the subject matter.