Lost Lambs

The Flynn family is in freefall. Catherine and Bud's open marriage has reached its inevitable catastrophic breaking point, and their three daughters are each spiraling in their own spectacular orbit. Abigail, the eldest, is a vaguely anorexic romantic dating a man in his twenties nicknamed War Crimes Wes — a rumored ex-soldier whose past is exactly as murky as that nickname implies. Louise, the middle child, is trapped in a prison of her own mundanity and secretly corresponding online with a terrorist. Harper, the youngest, is a precocious and gloriously unhinged twelve-year-old — a troublemaker who frees lobsters from restaurant tanks, claims stigmata, teaches herself Latin to mess with the school's Pentecostal group, and has show more racked up significant debt on Korean wholesale websites using her mother's credit card. She's also being sent to a wilderness reform camp because she keeps insisting that someone — or something — is monitoring the town. Casting a long shadow over all of them is Paul Alabaster, a nefarious local billionaire with Epstein-ish criminal cunning and Peter Thiel-ish immortality fixations. Nobody dares look too closely at what he's actually doing. Nobody except Harper. The family's chaos eventually funnels into an amateur vigilante sting operation to take him down — which, improbably, is what finally brings them together. Debut novel from the co-founder of Forever Magazine, described by the New York Times as "if the Royal Tenenbaums were middle-class and likable."

[May contain spoilers]
Harper is correct — Alabaster is surveilling the town and running genuine conspiracies, which means the book lives in that delicious space where the paranoid person turns out to be completely right. The sting operation is deliberately absurdist rather than thriller-taut, with the whole family bumbling into it from their separate disasters and somehow making it work. The ending has some loose threads that don't fully resolve, which bothered some but delighted others as consistent with the book's anarchic spirit. The prose is sharp and very funny throughout — Harper's confessional list of her transgressions is considered one of the great debut passages.
What I think: This is literary absurdist family comedy with a satirical bite — wickedly funny, propulsive, and genuinely warm underneath the chaos. Harper alone is worth the price of admission. show less

How do you feel about the idea of gnats invading your words?
Because, while gnats are a small part of Lost Lambs, I feel like whether or not you can handle gnats invading your words is, to some extent, the litmus test for whether or not you will like this book.

If you are finding yourself sneering with disdain, congratulations, you’ve removed yourself from the running. But if, like me, you feel intrigued and driven to ask “What do you mean by that,” then this may be your sort of book.

As for me, I laughed every time I spotted a new gnat hidden in a word. Words like gnatural and imagingnation! It was the weirdest choice on the author’s part, and it totally worked.

I know it’s early in the year to call it, but it’s possible that show more this may end up being my favorite read of the year! Lost Lambs is a darkly funny delight, filled with outrageous scenarios and irreverent humor. I loved all three of the sisters as well as War Crimes Wes! Unlike with most other books, I would’ve been happy if this book had thousands of pages and went on and on into eternity.

While reading, several authors and books came to mind; J.D. Salinger, Canadian author Heather O’Neill, The Bee Sting by Paul Murray (the content of the story, not the way it’s written), and Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood (the way it’s written, not the content of the story).

Madeline Cash has secured herself auto-buy status for all her future books in one fell swoop! Highly recommend! show less

"If life is nothing, and death is nothing, why make a lateral move?"

This suburban satire was SOOOO GOOD. It is smart, funny, insightful, clever (almost too clever, but somehow never falls over that edge), and incredibly well written. Satire is hard, and Cash nails it. She manages to be honest about people, about flaws, and to still grant grace all over the place. I know everyone loves Tom Perotta, but I am on record as not liking his work for a variety of reasons. For me, this is what Perotta tries to do, and consistently fails. Cash loves her characters (even the delightfully evil bad guy, who is absolutely Elon Musk), but as with any true love, she loves them not despite their flaws, but including their flaws. And the flaws are show more gigantic ones. This is not a situation where someone picks their nose or leaves socks on the floor; this book gives us fully drawn people who don't bathe, who neglect their children. who stand by idly while children are abused (like most everyone in the Epstein files who was not actually abusing children), who are mercenaries, who facilitate domestic terrorism. Cash loves them, holds their transgressions up to the light, and revels in their absolution. Perotta cures his characters' flaws and gives them endings that could never happen, and which they rarely merit, even if they were possible.

A best of the best for me. I listened to this, and the audiobook read by Christine Lakin is almost certainly going to end up on my best narration of the year list. show less

This was a bizarre tale of the Flynns and their family dynamic. It also addresses their church community and the father's job. The parents have an "open" marriage, when Catherine decides she is bored in their life. Bud is upset over this and seeks solace in the woman running a church group. Their 3 children each have issues of their own. Abigail is dating a much older man, Louise is learning to build bombs, and Harper urges her father to investigate the discrepancies in his firm's shipping records. Some strange things happen in the town and to the family in this debut novel. A little strange.

Not my favorite read. I'm one of those people that stops immediately when I find a misspelled word. Although, the "g" gimmick in this book didn't seem to bother others, it was a problem for me. Definitely not a bad book, and I did like the characters, I probably should have listened to this one!

4.5
loveeed this quirky dysfunctional family so funny