A review by lauuwz
Sweet Lamb of Heaven by Lydia Millet

4.0

Disjointed and truly strange, but beautifully written and, in my opinion, compulsively readable. The premise of this novel is very ambitious, and it would be remarkable if it were able to deliver on that premise.

Spoiler

Millet spends the first half of the novel ratcheting up the tension with glee, but the denouement is unsatisfying, even muddled; it might be impossible for the narrator to effect any other conclusion. I haven't read anything that cultivates such an atmosphere of dreamy panic: waves crashing on a cliffside off-season motel on the Maine coast, a child unwilling to play with a sheepskin lamb, a disingenuous Bible-thumping politician who may be the devil incarnate, a woman looking down at her toes to find the nails growing. My frustration here is the slipperiness of the story, but I think the story has to be slippery because the world that the narrator lives in is extremely slippery itself. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯