In her latest novel, Sweet Lamb of Heaven, (one of our May picks) Lydia Millet provides a first-person account of a mother (Anna) and daughter (Lena) on the run from an unfaithful, uninterested husband. However, this is no ordinary “run-away-with-child-from-bad-husband” kind of story. No, Millet added another layer. 
Shortly after Lena was born, Anna began to hear voices. These voices only spoke to Anna when the baby was sleeping and then stopped completely when Lena began to speak. As Anna tried to hide from her husband on the other side of the country, she also tried to understand the meaning (if any) of the voices.
When Anna’s husband decides to run for political office, he hunts down Anna and Lena to enhance “the narrative” he presented during his campaign. He wanted to appeal to his constituents as a family man with good values and needed Anna and Lena to play the part of a caring wife and loving daughter.
The themes in Sweet Lamb of Heaven were a healthy mixture of several different stories I have heard before. It was part Gone Girl, part House of Cards, and part Eat, Pray, Love. However, despite seeing themes from other books and television shows, I found the book to be highly original and completely fascinating.
Although not a difficult read, Sweet Lamb of Heaven is not a quick read. Each page is packed and deserves to be digested slowly. Millet’s writing was well crafted and thought-provoking. Below are a few passages that stood out to me as being particularly interesting:
“I committed a cardinal error of women, by which I mean an error to which women in particular seem prone: the error of expecting someone else to change toward them, to grow into alignment.” – p. 48
“Young children are the standard-bearers of visible love, I thought, watching. After we grow up and get sparing with our physical affection, children are sorely needed to bridge the gap.” – p. 54
“I harbored romantic delusions – that pre-nostalgic filmmaking of the self that separates events into vignettes and montages, curates time into a gallery of sepia-toned images.” – p. 92
“Our idea of equality is a fiction useful mostly for the purposes of fairness, for law and economics. Elsewhere it’s an empty husk, a costume we put on when we get up in the morning. In the length of our legs and arms, the breadth of our shoulders, the tendons that give us strength or weakness, our beauty or lack of it, sharp or dull intelligence – we aren’t equal at all, and we never have been.” – p. 153
Did you get a chance to read it? What did you think? Let us know in the comments section below, or tweet us your thoughts in six words or less on twitter!
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