Book Review: ‘The Lamb’ by Lucy Rose (cannibal mother and daughter horror)
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cover that lulls the reader into a false sense of security more than with Lucy Rose’s already acclaimed debut, ‘The Lamb’.
It may be beautifully written, but it’s also horrific and uncomfortable, and ultimately heartbreaking. It’s not an easy book to read, and yet the prose is effortless and being sucked in Margot and Mama’s world is immediate and claustrophobic.
A FOLK TALE. A HORROR STORY. A LOVE STORY. AN ENCHANTMENT.
Margot and Mama have lived by the forest since Margot can remember. When Margot isn't at school, they spend quiet days together in their cottage, waiting for strangers to knock on their door. Strays, Mama calls them. Mama loves the strays. She feeds them wine, keeps them warm. Then she satisfies her burning appetite by picking apart their bodies.
But Mama's want is stronger than her hunger sometimes, and when a white-toothed stray named Eden turns up in the heart of a snowstorm, little Margot must confront the shifting dynamics of her family, untangle her own desires and make a bid for freedom.
With this tender coming-of-age tale, debut novelist Lucy Rose explores how women swallow their anger, desire and animal instincts - and wrings the relationship between mother and daughter until blood drips from it.
For the months leading up to the release of this book all I saw were the glowing reviews and it made me nervous. How could ‘The Lamb’ possibly live up to that? It turns out it did.
With the layering of folklore and fairytale, there’s an almost dreamlike feeling to the novel that leads us through the twisted idyll of Mama and Margot’s life in the countryside of the Northwest of England, and the horrors underlying it are sharp and vivid, bursting out with glimpses of Margot’s reality when it’s least expected.
There is, of course, the kidnapping, murder and cannibalism of the ‘strays’ that wander too close to the cottage, but there’s also Mama’s experience of being forced into being a mother and a wife and her resentment of the way is changed her, her body and her life. Though what she does to people and especially to Margot is evil, I id have some sympathy for her at some moments; she was desperately in need of help and support, but instead she was forgotten, ignored and dismissed. The system failed her, but it failed Margot even more.
Less fortunate children who have problems at school and at home are always the ones who need help the most, and a lot of them time, they’re the ones that get forgotten and left behind. They are disregarded as trouble makers and even the people who have identified something as wrong are reluctant to reach out, even though everything is screaming at them that something is wrong, before it’s too late. It’s heartbreaking and a shot of reality in this dreamlike world that screams to the inequalities of the children that are left behind and utterly, utterly failed by everyone around her. It all works into the fairytale-esque nature of ‘The Lamb’.
You know those novels that you want to devour (how appropriate) because they’re just so good, but you have to take it slow because your heart is in your throat? That’s what the last section of ‘The Lamb’ was like. I was hoping, hoping, hoping that what I knew was coming would somehow be magically prevented, even though I knew that’s not how the story would go because this novel is structured around folktales and fairytales. The dark kind, the Grimm’s and the Perrault’s, not the Disney ones, and those end in a weird type of hopeful tragedy, but the tragedy does happen.
‘The Lamb’ is an incredibly powerful and evocative debut that I think will linger all year until those 2025 favourites lists start to appear at the end of this year. Margot, Mama and Eden will dig themselves under your skin and refuse to leave.
‘The Lamb’ by Lucy Rose is out now. Thank you to Weidenfeld & Nicolson and NetGalley for the review copy.
Written by Sophie
