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Lamb traces the self-discovery of David Lamb, a narcissistic middle aged man with a tendency toward dishonesty, in the weeks following the disintegration of his marriage and the death of his father. Hoping to regain some faith in his own goodness, he turns his attention to Tommie, an awkward and unpopular eleven-year-old girl. Lamb is convinced that he can help her avoid a destiny of apathy and emptiness, and even comes to believe that his devotion to Tommie is in her best interest. But when Lamb decides to abduct a willing Tommie for a road trip from Chicago to the Rockies, planning to initiate her into the beauty of the mountain wilderness, they are both shaken in ways neither of them expects.
Lamb is a masterful exploration of the dynamics of love and dependency that challenges the boundaries between adolescence and adulthood, confronts preconceived notions about conventional morality, and exposes mankind’s eroded relationship with nature.
"Lolita gets a 21st-century spin in this gripping debut… Nadzam has a crisp, fluid writing style, and her dialogue is reminiscent of Sam Shepard's…it’s a fine first effort: storytelling as accomplished as it is unsettling." - Publishers Weekly
"A disturbing and elusive novel about manipulation and desperate friendship." - Kirkus Reviews
"[A] magnificent epic...Smith's buoyant writing carries the novel through the pitches and swells of the entertaining plot, and his virtuosity with language makes for pitch-perfect description of all her surveys." - Booklist
"...Smith weaves the multiple threads of the characters' stories into a lyrical and colorful pattern while bringing the teeming streets of Chicago and the unspoiled islands of Melanesia to life...[an] excellent read..." - Library Journal
"Bonnie Nadzam manages to write gorgeous prose about people and skies and mountains while still creating tension and suspense on the level of a thriller, while also walking us into complex and delicate and unsettling moral territory with brilliant subtlety and insight. Lamb is a remarkable debut, by a writer to watch. I will be thinking about these characters for a long time." - Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
This information about Lamb was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
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