There’s been a lot of hype about Meline Cash’s debut novel, Lost Lambs, and it’s easy to see why. It’s a darkly comic, dysfunctional family saga set in a lightly surreal version of contemporary America.
The novel opens with a priest in a small US town trying to deal with a gnat infestation in his church after a local woman donates a plant that turns out to be full of gnat eggs. “It was Miss Winkle’s fault, she had brought the gnats and this was unforgivable, not in the eyes of God but those of Father Andrew …”
From there, the story turns to the deeply chaotic Flynn family as their lives spiral in absurd directions. Catherine and Bud’s relationship is clearly collapsing and may or may not end in separation or divorce. Their marriage made passionate sense when he was a young rock star and she was an aspiring artist. Since then, life has lost its glamour and gained three daughters, a suburban house and a lot of Tupperware.
Catherine is drawn to Jim, an amateur artist who offers her “the youthful comfort of being understood”. He revives her artistic ambitions, prompting her to cover the Flynn home with nude self-portraits and announce that she wants an open marriage. What she doesn’t yet know is that Jim keeps a collection of pottery vaginas in his basement — “each of these p***ies has touched my life”.
