![]() ![]() He basked in an exquisite sensation of déjà vu, feeling a comradeship with other great discoverers: James Cook, Charles Darwin, Jacques Cousteau… If he could practice patience and maintain equilibrium, Adam felt certain that every book he’d ever read, every piece of art that had ever moved him, every conversation, creature, curiosity, and concept he’d encountered in his lifetime would align like cherries in the slot machine of his mind.įor now, the anticipation of it, the pre-buzz of impending discovery, was as mouthwatering as the squeak of a wine cork before dinner. ![]() This thing, whatever it was-an idea? a theory?-was taking its own sweet time to make itself known. He had one big discovery left in him, he felt sure of that. ![]() Sound’s relationship to the inner-ear labyrinth (another spiral?)Īdam tried to decipher the clues his mind was depositing.Ocean spirals: shells, whirlpools, waves, bubble nets, seahorse tails.His house, located deep in the Wellfleet Woods, was littered with scraps of paper covered with his fastidious penmanship. His daytime musings spread onto legal pads, Post-it Notes, and the backs of envelopes and receipts, mostly in the form of unedited bullet-point lists. Each morning, buzzing, he slung his legs off the bed and sat bolt upright, naked, allowing his male parts to hang over the edge of the mattress, and did his best to capture these jangled dreams, recording what details he could remember in a spiral-bound notebook kept by his bedside. He awoke daily to random words, incoherent thoughts, and fleeting images, convinced that their meaning, though not yet clear, would develop in the gelatin silver process of his mind. ExcerptĪdam Gardner hadn’t slept well in weeks. Set in the fraught summer of 2016, and drawing on the biblical tale of Cain and Abel, Little Monsters is an absorbing, sharply observed family story by a writer who knows Cape Cod inside and out-its Edenic lushness and its snakes. As Adam grows more attuned to the frequencies of the deep sea and less so to the people around him, Ken and Abby each plan the elaborate gifts they will present to their father on his birthday, jostling for primacy in this small family unit. Meanwhile, Abby and Ken are both harboring secrets of their own, and there is a new person on the periphery of the family-Steph, who doesn’t make her connection known. He has always managed his bipolar disorder with medication, but he’s determined to make one last scientific breakthrough and so he has secretly stopped taking his pills, which he knows will infuriate his children. Ken is a successful businessman with political ambitions and a picture-perfect family and Abby is a talented visual artist who depends on her brother’s goodwill, in part because he owns the studio where she lives and works.Īs the novel opens, Adam is approaching his seventieth birthday, staring down his mortality and fading relevance. Now, years later, the siblings’ lives are still deeply entwined. Their father, Adam, a brilliant oceanographer, raised them mostly on his own in his remote home on Cape Cod, where the attachment between Ken and Abby deepened into something complicated-and as adults their relationship is strained. Ken and Abby Gardner lost their mother when they were small and they have been haunted by her absence ever since. “A juicy story…Simmers with tension as secrets explode out into the open.” - The Washington Post * “So alluring…I raced happily through the pages.” - The New York Times Book Review * “An absolutely captivating read.” -Elin Hilderbrand * “Gorgeously told…The work of a seasoned and wonderfully wise storyteller.” -Paula McLainįrom the author of the bestselling memoir Wild Game comes a riveting novel about Cape Cod, complicated families, and long-buried secrets-for fans of the New York Times bestsellers The Paper Palace and Ask Again, Yes. ![]()
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