Lost Lambs

Lost Lambs ~ Madeline Cash

Bud and Catherine Flynn’s marriage is in trouble. She has decided the solution is an open marriage and to have a neighbor take nude photos of her, which she places around the house. Bud sleeps in his car most nights. Neither of them really know how to parent. Neither parent cooks, so the family lives off of take out and there is rarely much to eat in the fridge, the downstairs bathroom is moldy and the faucet doesn’t work, and their 3 teenaged daughters are troubled. Abigail, 17, has ended her affair with the high school art teacher, and is now dating a twenty-something military veteran with stomach issues named War Crime Wes. Louise, 15, feels invisible and desperately wants to be noticed. She finds a friend in an online forum for middle children, who is grooming her to become a domestic terrorist. Harper, 13, is a genius, and has taught herself several languages. She is a conspiracy theorist and feels that the residents of their small, boring city are being closely watched.

That all sounds dark dark dark, but this novel is not that. Cash imbues it with enough humor that it doesn’t become Instead, it is funny and silly and even warm hearted. The book starts with the local priest’s irritation over the fact that one of the church ladies brought an orchid to church, an orchid with gnats which have infested the church. Whenever a word has the letters ‘nat’, she changes it to ‘gnat’, which at first I thought was typos until I caught on. The local businesses have punny names, like Ann Frank’s Dairy, an ice cream store that dognates the profits to fight anti-semitism. The story is told from many different points of view, not just the Flynn family, but also the priest, the church lady, the boyfriend, a neighbor whom Catherine is considering sleeping with. When Bud decides to up his game at work in hopes of winning a monetary recognition award, he discovers that there may be some truth to Harper’s theories. Throw in a tech billionaire with very questionable morals, and you have the makings of an absurdist tale. I liked it a lot, highly recommended.