A review by prestonnn
The Lamb by Lucy Rose

challenging dark emotional reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated

4.0

This book reads like a fable. 

I wished we could graze our knees together on the gravel in the playground and be messy, but she would always follow butterflies and good behavior. Maybe one day, with me, Abbie could unravel. She would leave the safe nook she lives in and become forgotten, unnoticed by the outside world. 57

He did what most adults do in front of children: pretend he was not afraid. I wondered if he was as scared as I was of the things in this world. 104

“You make me feel full. Real full. You make me feel so full I could be sick, like I’ve eaten all day since waking. I never want that feeling to go away.” 108 Ruth to Eden

The absence of love had spoilt something in their souls and mine. Our love was rotten, but still looking for the burning it craved; for anything to revive the embers that had gone out long ago. 109

He’s the empty seat everywhere I go. 125 (absent dads)

We all need different sorts of love to make us feel whole. You’ll know it too, one day. I’m not just a mother. I’m a whole person. 155

When the hot sunlight came through the clouds, they shared a kiss. This was true love, fighting and then crashing into one another again like waves. 162

They wanted to become one body. One set of lungs and one heart to share while it beat the blood about their arteries. 169

Moments later, I lurched into a cubicle and hurled myself over a toilet seat. I vomited up what little food was in my belly, hoping with all my heart that Abbie’s strand of hair was kept safe somewhere inside my intestines. 196

The house felt emptier when she wept, as if the items we loved slowly made their way off the shelves to hide. 209

It was easy to picture him with blood and mud smothered across his chin and lips, with his teeth half buried into a kit’s coat. 235

A foetus in a belly couldn’t be selfish. But a human child could be. 249

I imagined taking a knife to her skin the way axes bit at bark just so I could count the tree rings inside. 273

When I peeled away the leaves, branchlike veins were left imprinted in my skin, like the scars left behind from a deep sleep against a crumpled bedsheet. Twigs knitted in my hair and mud smeared across my forehead. I was a piece of the forest. A small flake of skin upon its back. 281