Lamb

by Bonnie Nadzam

Winner of the 2011 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize

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.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Novels, Audiobook, Book Club, Dark, Adult

275 pages, Paperback

First published September 13, 2011

About the author

Bonnie Nadzam has published fiction and essays in many journals and magazines, including Granta, Harper’s Magazine, Orion Magazine, A Public Space, The Iowa Review, Epoch, The Kenyon Review, and others. Her first novel, Lamb, was recipient of the Center for Fiction’s Flaherty Dunnan First Novel Award in 2011, and was longlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. It has been translated into several languages and made into an award-winning independent film (Orchard 2016) starring Ross Partridge and Oona Laurence. Her second novel, Lions, was released by Grove Press in 2016 and was a USA PEN Finalist for Literary Fiction. She is the co-author, with Dale Jamieson, of Love in the Anthropocene (OR Books 2015). She holds a BA from Carleton College, an MFA from Arizona State University, and an MA and PhD from the University of Southern California.

Reviews

[Will Byrnes · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bonnie Nadzam has written an insightful, fascinating character study, supported by a gift for landscape description, but marred by some inconsistency.


Bonnie Nadzam - image from The Guardian

David Lamb is middle-aged, a liar and a loser, a narcissist and a dreamer, a kid who never really grew up. Living alone in a hotel with other marital flotsam, he pines for his ex, thinks about having been with her sister, then calls his girlfriend, a Princeton grad he bangs in hallways. Dave is full of promises, and espouses idealized aspirations, but he always runs rather empty on delivery. After his father’s funeral, Dave is sitting in a parking lot, wallowing in his existential crisis when a child approaches.

Tommie, not the prettiest rose in the bunch, lives in a world where supper might be a bowl of Cap’n Crunch, and tailoring one’s shirt entails liberal use of a stapler. Her mother’s bf is the slovenly Jessie, not enough interested in Tommie to look up from his TV sports. On a dare from not-really friends, she walks up to Dave as he ponders life and bums a cigarette. He is drawn to her. Not in the creepy way you are probably figuring about now. He sees that this innocent is being toyed with by cruel children and offers to help her get back at them by pretending to kidnap her. A sort of friendship grows between the two. He tells her “I don’t exactly have any friends in this town.” “That makes two of us,” she says. Tommie’s innocence appeals as a salve to his corruption, their loneliness a bond. Dave wants to help her, teach her, show her things, buy her things. It is unclear just what it is that Dave wants from this pre-adolescent girl. In some of his imaginings they are like father and child, in others, odd-couple pals. But dark thoughts bubble through about wanting to destroy her tiny beacon of light with his emptiness. And there is cringe material as well, as Dave is not always exactly appropriate with his very young companion. Tommie is eager to experience something of the world beyond her stultifying enclave.

This is one of the odder buddy books I have read. Both Dave and Tommie are living lives of quiet desperation, and Nadzam has a gift for using landscape description as the expression of their hopelessness. The book opens with:

We’ll say this all began just outside of Chicago, in late summer on a residential street dead-ending in a wall. It was the kind of wall meant to hide freeways from view, and for miles in each direction parallel streets ended at the same concrete meridian. No trees on the lawn, no birds on the wires, Northern shrikes gone, little gray-bellied wrens gone. Evening grosbeaks and elm trees and most of the oaks and all the silver brooms of tall grass and bunch flowers and sweetfern and phlox gone. Heartsease gone. About the tops of upturned trash bins, black flies scripted the air.”

I was hooked from word one. Nadzam’s gift for description litters the rest of the tale, a presence. In one passage, she uses landscape to ironic effect.

While the girl was in the bathroom at a Chevron in a travel stop off I-80, Lamb bought two postcards and walked outside to the edge of the broken asphalt where trash and weeds grew in a ragged line and broken glass glittered in the daylight. It was hot, and everything looked new, lighter, open.

In another she captures Dave’s sense that he is missing out on life:

he scanned the horizon and the ground beneath his feet for something green, for a place where he could press his cheek against warm dirt, for anything like a loophole, a chink, a way out. Nothing before him but the filthy streets and bright signs announcing the limits of his world: Transmission Masters and Drive Time financing and Drive-Thru Liquors and Courtesy Loans and Office Depot and a Freeway Inn and a Luxury Inn and a Holiday Inn. If there was something beneath, something behind, it was hidden from him.

But Dave has a vision of a purer place and time, a place in the Rockies, with “a line of broken-toothed mountains…a swimming hole. A river. Trees and clear skies.” Later, “The kid couldn’t know what she was missing, the depths to which she was being duped by a world she had no hand in making.” He really does want something better for her.


Ross Partridge as Dave and Oona Lawrence as Tommie - image from CriticsRoundup.com

It is this something that the pair hit the road to find. Of course, this is an America in which even the Rocky Mountain high has been brought low. The idyllic mountain pastures Dave promotes are filled with cow patties, broken fences, a shortage of indoor heat and suspicious neighbors.

The triumph of the book is in its portrayal of Dave Lamb. In Dave’s vision of himself, or his vision of a moment, he sees a truthseeker

“Look at me. I might be a lot of things, but I’m not a liar, okay?”
“Okay.”
“There’s precious little truth in this world, and I am one of its most enthusiastic spokespeople. Okay?

saith the liar.

Like all narcissists, Dave objectifies the people he encounters. He describes his nominal girlfriend thus:

A heart-stoppingly beautiful young woman. An expensive and well-educated system of reactions and responses, and he knew them all. Had known them, frankly, since years before she was born.”

Yet, his affection for Tommie seems genuine. Is it? Or has he created a virginal ideal he can use to gain some feeling of power by conquering? His narcissism causes him to believe his own BS. He sells Tommie a fantasy, but even that pitch is off, beginning with natural beauty in a high, sage-filled valley, but mixing in oddities like a cooler full of Mexican beer and a braided rug on a concrete floor.

A lot of the book is Dave’s internal debate.

“That wasn’t kidnapping. It had been a favor, right? A lesson. He hadn’t kidnapped anyone. She was back in her apartment, having dinner with her parents, her girlfriends perhaps chastened of whoring each other out for laughs in parking lots. It wasn’t kidnapping when the kid ended up safely delivered home in better shape than she left in the morning. It was like he found a loose bolt out there in the world and had carefully turned it back into place. It was fine.”

Dave’s whims, his impulses rule and his gift of professional level bullshit lets him get away with the most ridiculous actions. One could certainly think that the author asks us to accept too much acceptance on the part of the people Dave cons. But those of us who have known people of a narcissistic bent can attest to their uncanny powers of persuasion. That is a characteristic that Nadzam has portrayed to perfection here. Dave told Tommie that his name was Gary.

“Gary”
“Yes, dear.”
“I think I maybe want to call my mom.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“In the morning?”
“Sure.”
“What do you want to tell her?”
“Just that everything is okay, and I’m okay, and don’t worry.”
“Do you think she’ll probably worry anyway?”
“Yeah”
“Do you think a phone call might make her worry more?”
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe we should think about that.”

Dave has a lawyer’s ability to take your words and make them seem to mean the exact opposite of what you intended. He could be a camp guard telling the inmates that everything was ok, and would they please hurry along to get their delousing showers.

So do they or don’t they? There is one scene in which I suspected they had, but a GR friend whose opinion I respect believes otherwise. So, it is ambiguous. I confess that I did have certain standard expectations for the ending, but I was surprised at the direction the author chose.

For those who see Lolita here, the author says not so much. But she was influenced by another Nabakov work, one about Don Quixote.

Don Quixote, he writes, “is a kind of treatise about how meaning gets into things and lives. It is a book about enchantment, the inappropriateness of enchantment in a disenchanted world.” (http://harpers.org/archive/2011/08/hb... )

The author also was expressing in this book regret at the pain she has caused:

Lamb vows to show her what’s left of the imagined America he’s been describing. He plays with the child not because he is a predator, but because he is himself a child; his fantasies of life as a cowboy, of entitlement and adventure, have eclipsed what should be responsible adulthood, only to hurt all those he claims to love. It was that kind of hurt — and the despair of realizing I’ve caused as much as I’ve received — that most influenced the shape of my book

While this book could have used at least one more edit, it does succeed in making a character come to life, in painting a portrait of a contemporary America that has passed its sell-by date when it comes to fulfilling idyllic dreams, and in sustaining a very engaging level of tension. It is a good book that could have been better, but is not half bad, and a very impressive first novel.

A film made of the book was released in 2016. It did not fare well.

PS - and for fans of The League of Gentlemen, my inner voice kept hearing Papa Lazarou throughout, asking “is that you, Dave?”

=============================EXTRA STUFF

Nadzam on Twitter

A few sites are worth a look. There is an interview at Other Press and another at Harper.

[Baba · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shortlisted Women's Prize for Fiction 2013, Winner Flaherty Dunman First Novel Prize 2011 - David Lamb is 54, Tommie is an 11 year old girl; there's nothing wrong there is there? That's really the sub heading to this weird and compelling book about, I think, friendship and mortality. Most excellent prose, descriptions and characterisations in this wondrous debut novel. 8 out of 12.

2014 read

[Elyse Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bonnie Nadzam is a tremendous writer! Descriptions and details draw you in...
her prose is gorgeous. Having read her book, "Lions"....( soon to be released this July), and having absolutely loved it... I couldn't wait to get my hands on another book she wrote.

"Lamb"....was Bonnie Nadzam's first book: WOW... What a debut!!!!!! Holy smokes!!!
She came out moving mountains with this novel!

"LAMB", is peculiar. It's also gorgeously written. - I think it's fair to say this book is 'creepy'.
The plot is disturbing & distinctive. The narrative is seductive. It's not easy to stop thinking about the happenings in this story even when you are not reading it.
The reader is asked to 'really' look inside the head of a man who is a 'possible' pedophile. Readers are also asked to consider Lamb as a decent man who only wants to help a girl from a broken home.
Either way...we know a few things. David Lamb, might be gentle as a 'lamb'....( as a reader I explored this thought)... but I wouldn't call him innocent. He is a 'down--and out' insecure middle age old fart. Whether or not he is aware of manipulating Tommie, ( the young 11 year old girl), it's what he is doing. Nadzam's narrative is clever the way she influences us. Upfront she guides us through Lamb's grooming of Tommie---yet a window is open for different points of interpretation. It's as though Nadzam has designed into the plot for us ( the readers), to be objective -- not endorsing --but understanding -- ( and learning) how a similar situation could develop.

It seems to me that the origin of the novel's repulsion is its reminder at how often 'poison/ evil' is motivated by the best intentions.

The reading is uncomfortable yet compelling....[clearly not a book for everybody]...but I'll say this, Bonnie Nadzam has a great understanding of predation. It's my opinion...as a girl who grew up as a latchkey kid, without a father, this story is not as far fetch as we would hope.

4.7 stars!

[Blair · Rating 5 out of 5]

I swore to myself I would write a proper, in-depth, meaningful review of Lamb: something that actually had some meat and substance to it, not one of the one-paragraph rush jobs I've often done when I don't have the time or inclination to get into a proper-write up. Something that would make people sit up, take notice and think, 'wow, I really want to read this book'.

Of course, it hasn't materialised yet because I find it really hard to write about books I love. And I don't know how I can possibly do Lamb justice.

This is a story about David Lamb, a man in his mid-fifties who finds himself at a crossroads of sorts. His father has died; he has split with his wife, but doesn't know if he's made the right decision; he is half-heartedly embroiled in an ill-advised affair with a younger female colleague, who is besotted with him. In the midst of this confusion he meets an eleven-year-old girl, Tommie, who both disgusts him and arouses some kind of paternal instinct when he sees that she is the butt of a joke made by her savvier 'friends'. His interest awakened, Lamb finds himself drawn back to Tommie again and again, and a plan begins to formulate in his mind: he will liberate her from the drudgery of her life, take her on a trip to the country, teach her about nature and the great outdoors.

So this is a story about a seemingly ordinary man in the grip of a mid-life crisis making a strange, rash, confused, risky decision. It is also a story about an extremely manipulative fiftysomething man grooming and then kidnapping a pre-pubescent child and taking her halfway across the American Midwest to a remote, snow-bound cabin.

There have been (and I'm sure there will continue to be) the inevitable comparisons to Lolita, but Lamb is a far more opaque story. The slippery, shifting narrative is like a voice whispering in the reader's ear, inviting them to be complicit in Lamb's actions ('there was nothing wrong with that, was there?'): but crucially, the story is not actually told from his point of view. (... Or is it?) Tommie is no Lolita, but Lamb is no Humbert Humbert either - he is constantly trying to convince himself that his actions are motivated by a desire to do some good for a neglected child, trying to suppress and then justify his other desires. This obviously doesn't make what happens any less disturbing or uncomfortable, but it encourages complicated reactions from the reader. I found myself in a state of disgust and morbid fascination throughout, and I was so compelled by the story that it was difficult to put the book down, or to stop thinking about it whenever I did.

There are other layers to pick apart here. The contrasts and the similarities between the way Lamb treats Tommie and how he treats Linnie, his 'girlfriend': the manipulation, the patronising, cajoling language. The character names, loaded with meaning: Lamb and Tommie are the obvious ones, but Nadzam gives us, for example, minor male characters called Alison and Clare. The intriguing narration, which is intimate but distant: it gives glimpses, suggests reasons, but never fully answers the questions the plot throws up (does Lamb have a history of child abuse? Are his actions spontaneous, or the result of months, years of careful planning? Is there ever a sexual element to his 'relationship' with Tommie?) And who is telling the story? There is a sense that the narrator's ambiguity is deliberate (I mean deliberate on the part of the narrator rather than the author), and that the aim of the narrative may not be what it seems to be. This is most evident when the narrator speaks directly to the reader.

I could carry on like this for some time. The final thing to be said about this book is that it's wonderfully written. Lyrical, brisk and evocative, Nadzam's prose brings the environment and details of the story to life, to gorgeous effect.

Lamb is a phenomenal debut. Just read this book.

[piperitapitta · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Silence of the Lambs

“...niente di tutto questo sarà mai successo”*




David Lamb e Tommie partono insieme dai sobborghi di Chicago lasciandosi alle spalle la lunga Roosvelt Road; abbandonano il Midwest, attraversano il North Dakota, lambiscono il Wyoming, solcano il west fino ad approdare in una baita desolata alle pendici delle Montagne Rocciose.
Lui vuole prendersi cura di lei: lavarla, vestirla, insegnarle a ridere, a parlare, a pensare, proprio come se fosse una bambola.
Lei, imbambolata, che fa spallucce e dice “Mm-mh”, oppure “Uoo” a qualsiasi cosa lui le racconti, lo segue con curiosità, a volte spaventata, altre soggiogata, altre ancora inerte.
Potrebbe essere una qualsiasi storia di lui e lei che da est vanno a ovest, una qualsiasi road story, se non fosse che lui, David, un uomo di poco più di cinquant’anni che ha appena seppellito il padre, ha incontrato Tommie solo pochi giorni prima quando lei, per strada, lo ha abbordato per chiedergli una sigaretta.
Potrebbe essere una storia qualsiasi, quella di una sigaretta qualsiasi e di una scommessa qualsiasi fatta con delle amiche qualsiasi, se non fosse che Tommie, il viso cosparso di lentiggini e il corpo ancora senza forme di una bambina, ha soli undici anni.
Quasi dodici, dice lei, quando lui la invita a seguirlo in questo viaggio lungo una settimana, lungo tanto quanto una fuga da tutto può essere, senza che nessuno ne conosca intenzioni o motivazioni.



Diciamo che il giorno successivo non c’erano tutte quelle torri fatte d’acciaio zincato ai bordi della statale. Niente pali del telefono. Niente cavi. Diciamo che il furgone di Lamb e la statale erano le ultime vestigia del mondo reale. La strada era sommersa d’erba e fiori aromatici, cipolle selvatiche e sempiterni. Dalle morbide bocche dei penstemon e dalle sonnolente teste viola delle clematidi. Fu in un paesaggio del genere che oltrepassarono la linea del Midwest oltre la quale il cielo si spalanca, all’improvviso infinito, all’improvviso di un azzurro quasi spaventoso.
Tommie sedeva a gambe incrociate sul sedile del passeggero e Lamb le lanciava occhiate di sbieco, pensando che, se avesse voluto davvero uscire dal furgone, l’avrebbe lasciata andare.

Desiderare plasmare qualcuno, modellarlo a nostro piacimento, scoprirlo ancora tenero come un virgulto in fiore, vergine e inesplorato, anche se già segnato da un imprinting che potrebbe minarne lo sviluppo dalle radici, diventarne burattinaio, deus ex machina, è quello che succede a David Lamb, in una storia e in una escalation di avvenimenti che Bonnie Nadzam, qui al suo esordio, tratta con estrema cautela, in una versione contemporanea che alla Lolita di Nabokov è debitrice di molto.
La materia è incandescente, così come la tensione emotiva che, come la neve che cade fuori dalla baita durante i giorni che Tommie e Lamb trascorreranno lì, si accumula pagina dopo pagina e incrocia quella dei protagonisti a quella del lettore.

Chi è veramente Lamb, ci si chiederà alla fine del romanzo, e cosa sarà stata Tommie per lui? E per Tommie, cos’avrà significato lui, Lamb?
Chi sarà stato il vero agnello sacrificale, alla fine della storia, fra David e Tommie?
Io ho le mie risposte, che non sono affatto certezze, ma ciascun lettore, secondo la sua propria sensibilità o visione, saprà trovare le sue.
Da Lamb a Lions, comunque, Bonnie Nadzam è ormai una certezza, la sua è una scrittura potente, capace di sovvertire certezze e di scuotere nell’intimo.

Esiste un film omonimo tratto da questo romanzo - presentato al festival South by Southwest nel 2015 - che spero possa esserne all’altezza.
[edit 19/08/2018 - ora che l'ho visto, posso dire che il film merita il romanzo]

*concluse lei alzando gli occhi al cielo. “Lo so”.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a disturbing and chilling read. I was repulsed by paedophile Lamb, who was a controlling, delusional individual.

The backdrop to the story is the beauty of nature, which is in sharp contrast with the manipulating ugliness of grooming. Beautiful descriptions of the mountain wilderness adds realism that ups the creepyness of the story as this is where the paedo grooms his prey. Subtilely frightening.

[switterbug (Betsey) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bonnie Nazdam's dual degree in literature and environmental studies shines in her debut novel about human desire and dependency, and about the beauty and decline of the landscape, resplendent in its rawness and fragile vulnerability. Nature and humanity form a synergistic elixir that permeates the pores of the story.

David Lamb is a disturbed fifty-something man whose private aches are both diminishing and conquering him. His life collides with Tommie, who is only eleven-years-old, when she approaches him on a dare in a parking lot. Soon after that, he has abducted her through his calculated and unctuous intrusions, but she believes in her prepubescent mind that she has consensually agreed to his proposals. He offers to show her the true beauty of nature, and they abscond on a road trip from Chicago to the Rockies without Tommie informing her mother. He promises to return her in a specific amount of time.

What follows is an account, from an unknown narrator, of their trip. The intimacy of the narrator, and the almost oblique and quiet ferocity of narration, brings the reader to a suspenseful, uncomfortable place that is both familiar and alien. It is appalling and suggestive at intervals; the question of personal boundaries lurks on every dangerous, winding road.

The rack and pinion relationship between Tommie and Lamb is both complex and ineluctable. Tommie is not even developed yet, but matures biologically day by day; David Lamb regresses, and his sickness reduces him to predictable behaviors as an outgrowth of his need and desires. He uses reverse psychology and mimics a state of innocence and wonder through his delusion and grandiosity.

"How powerful she was as long as she asserted no will of her own" is the theme of this book, a dynamic conundrum that blends nature, the human need for connection, the question of will, and the paradoxical power of relationships. Nature and people are like that sometimes; leaving us and Mother Earth alone allows a ripe bloom, aggressive intervention can wither us. However, ignoring our personal and physical landscapes can lead to decay. There is a balance and a tipping point. Nazdam's awareness of the environment's impact on nature and humanity (and vice versa) is psychologically and scientifically acute.

Suspenseful drama and murky territory keeps the reader edgy and off-balance, but there were some pages that stagnated and recycled the drama a bit. Fortunately Nazdam usually aimed in a steady and ultimately propelling course. Even when the human drama occasionally crawled, nature's way continued to pivot and flourish from the narrative.

The narrator is an enigma, and it is left to the reader to decide who is telling the story. However, the voice was also vague, with an ambiguity that was equivocal and unintended. In lesser hands, it would have undermined the story itself. But the author kept us gripped to the characters and events of the story's time period, enough to give less weight of importance on the storyteller.

Similarities to Lolita are shallow and inadequate, easily a first observation but dispensed with as this story is more deeply analyzed. The names of many characters are provocatively utilized, also, in all their androgyny. This book merits discussion and debate; there are no concrete, handy answers--only steep steps to further examination and inquiry.

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Closing the last page of Lamb – Bonnie Nadzam’s psychological thriller – I realized I had been holding my breath for the final half-hour. It’s that kind of book…similar to a one-act play where the narrative keeps getting racheted up and screwed tighter, and the audience can never, ever even conceive of an intermission.

David Lamb – an innocuous and gentle name if I’ve ever heard one – is a seductive, narcissistic, and damaged man on the sunny side of 50, who is experiencing a heck of an existential crisis. He turns his attention to a young barely adolescent girl named Tommie, “a pale little freckled pig with eyelashes”, who is awkward and socially inept. He advises her and questions her and “the girl answered all of his inquiries as if Tommie were some other person in whom they were both extraordinarily interested in.”

By weaving mind-pictures of a fantasy life in the Rockies, he manipulates her into taking a road trip to the Rockies with him. “And there was nothing wrong with that, was there? It was good for her. It was just a little tonic for his poisonous heart. Right?”

The book never crosses over to the physical dark side. David Lamb is not your traditional pedophile; he wants something far more dangerous from Tommie. He wants her to absolve him, to testify to his goodness, to give him back some of the innocence of his lost adolescence. He says to her, haven’t always had nice people in my life. It makes me behave a little erratically, right?”

In the Rockies, David (calling himself Gary) continues his manipulation and mental seduction of the young Tommie. Bonnie Nadzam wisely makes a plot choice of briefly interjecting David’s girlfriend, Linnie, into the scene. The reader can then contrast how the mental seduction plays out with an adult – and with a child. One of the very creepiest scenes in the entire book is one in which the three come together, Linnie and Tommie intertwined far more than either of them know. “I;m afraid everyone’s in on something really wonderful, Linnie,” David says to her. “…and I don’t know what it is and I can’t be in on it.”

Another bold choice Ms. Nadzam makes it to “get out of voice” – increasingly more as the novel progresses. Whose voice is it? The author’s? David’s? Or the grown-up Tommie’s? There is evidence that points to the last theory, especially when we briefly learn what grown-up Tommie thinks about her transformational experience.

Once the story takes hold, this book is unputdownable. Anyone who has ever had experience with a narcissist will immediately understand the self-centered, self-focused seduction techniques. “You’re my twin,” David says to Tommie. “Your heart is hewn to mine. Isn’t it. Don’t you see?” And that’s the scariest line of all.

[Cynthia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a sick making book. It’s about a child molester named David Lamb who kidnaps an eleven year old girl named Tommie. It’s inevitable that with this theme Nadzam’s “Lamb” will be compared to Nabokov and his “Lolita”. It was a daring choice that Nadzam made. She had guts to invite the comparison. Shoot maybe she even welcomes it. She doesn’t live in Nabokov’s literary neighborhood though she sure lives in his same small town. She can write! Unlike “Lolita” “Lamb” is almost exclusively about how a molester slowly, carefully grooms his victim, how he gains her trust and attempts to trick himself into believing the crime(s) he’s committing are normal interactions between a 50 something man and an eleven year old girl. It makes your flesh crawl. Each step Lamb makes is small. You keep hoping that he’ll do the right thing. Maybe he’ll wake up and forget his own needs and let Tommie go. He also has a young girlfriend he entices to play a role, manipulating her as well as a nosey elderly neighbor, into playing along with his game. Lamb reflects on his superior level of intelligence. He feels entitled to hurt Tommie because others have hurt him. We get a window into his sad childhood. He’s been hurt so he’s justified in hurting Tommie. I did mention this book is sick making right? He’s protected by how sinister his actions are. Normal people can’t conceive that Lamb would do such things and Tommie’s long past sticking up for herself. Though her theme is ugly Nadzam is a wonderful writer. I’m sure she’s done a service by showing us how molesters groom their victims but I hope she has a different theme for her next book. Come on Bonnie…..give us some murderers or drug dealers or sumpin.

[Norma Wright · Rating 1 out of 5]

Lamb was a very disturbing book to read. On the surface it appeared to be a story about a connection between a middle age man and a 12 year old girl. There was no overt sexual abuse involved. But under the surface, Lamb was a pedophile. He stalked and subsequently took a vulnerable 12 girl to groom for his obsession. Their 7 days on the road discovering exciting places was in fact a slow preparation of Lamb's ulltimate plan. In the end Lamb, for some reason, did not complete his plan. Instead he returned the girl home.

Lamb knows he changed this girl's life, but he thinks he changed it for the better. Even though there was no overt sexual abuse, there was implied sexual contact for the girl. Each time there would be a whisper of sexual contact: Holding her, kissing her, having her sleep in the same bed with him. Yes, this child's life has changed. But not for the better. He has changed who she is and it is a change that will follow her the rest of her life. Abused children (and she was one) never get over their abuse. Sometimes they get beyond it, but never over it.

[lana · Rating 2 out of 5]

I also read this on the recommendation of the bookstore employees, and now I am thinking that I don't trust them anymore.

When I read Nabokov's Lolita (and here the comparisons are inevitable), I was stunned that a pedophile could make a sympathetic character. In Lamb, it's unclear if sex with a child actually occurs, though there's no question that the relationship at hand in inappropriate. Perhaps it's the shock of the subject matter that makes this book alluring, because it's definitely not the characters. At times, the writing is lovely: when Nadzam is describing the countryside, or when Lamb slips into storytelling mode.

Lamb is an aging man who is having an affair with a younger woman at the firm where he has worked for nearly twenty years. His wife has left him, and he goes on a three-week leave from work to let things cool off. He lies to everyone- his former wife, his boss, the younger woman, the child he meets, and ultimately, himself. While initially his contact with Tom, the young girl, seems like a desperate man looking to connect in the worst of places, as the two of them spend time together, and at the cabin, Lamb starts to come unhinged. His ego, desperation, and lying make him hard to sympathize with, and you can't help but feel that he's brought everything upon himself. He knows that he's hurt Tom, that he's probably irrevocably damaged her young psyche, and yet he can't help himself. He doesn't get caught, which made me feel even less sympathetic- here's one more thing that this man gets, despite the wake of damaged women he leaves behind.

Tom is seen through the eyes of David, and as such she is more a vessel and less her own character. This is a poor move, as it makes it hard to understand and like her beyond sympathy with general troubled-young-girl tropes. I suppose what's important to the novel is what Tommie is to David, and her role in that regard is very clear. But it's a little unsettling to read a novel like this where the victim remains so blank, where my dislike for the protagonist is so much stronger than *any* feeling I have about his victim.

Ultimately, I think the book is more of a gimmick that relies heavily on the shock value of its subject matter, and doesn't quite deliver in the depth of its characters. I feel as though I know the landscape better than the people.

[☽ Sono sempre vissuta nel castello Chiara · Rating 4 out of 5]

La letteratura non dovrebbe proporre ma indagare...trovo che se non si accetta questa verità non si possa apprezzare pienamente la lettura di libri unici come questo. Estremamente complesso a livello emotivo ed etico Lamb indaga (appunto) una relazione di amicizia ed amore non convenzionale tra un uomo adulto e una ragazzina (troppo) giovane, quando si sconfina in qualcosa di non accettabile? Chi decide cosa è meglio per qualcuno? Sarebbe troppo semplice dare un giudizio morale: bianco o nero/bene o male, e di certo Bonnie Nazdam non lo da, lei comunque bravissima a creare queste atmosfere ambigue, quasi sognanti, ha inoltre una capacità stilistica eccelsa sia nel tratteggiare i personaggi, nei dialoghi e nelle descrizioni degli ambienti

[Melissa Crytzer Fry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m not sure words can accurately depict how I feel about this novel, other than to say that I really liked it DESPITE its severely disturbing nature. Nadzam’s literary voice is stunning; I’ve never read a novel that so accurately characterized its cast through mostly short, snappy dialogue. It was utterly genius because the purpose it served was to truly illustrate the manipulative nature of child predators. That Nadzam was able to get into the mind of someone this twisted, and illustrate his beguiling nature is rather incredible to me.

I was equally awestruck by the lovely, moving descriptions of the Midwest and the Rockies – such beautiful, literary prose, it took my breath away. The mix of gut-wrenching dread I felt for the 11-year-old girl, Tommie, combined with the natural beauty of the surroundings, created a seesaw of emotions that kept me off-balance, never really sure if Lamb, the main character, was a bad guy or good guy (though my gut was guiding me in a particular direction throughout the novel. How could it not?)…

This is a story about a middle-aged man who thinks he’s doing the right thing by rescuing a girl from her mundane urban experience in a loveless home surrounded by concrete. The book’s focus on the erosion of our natural landscape to buildings and “progress” – and the loss of innocence that children suffer as a result – resonated with me. Again – the environmental descriptions were lush.

Warning: this is NOT an easy read, especially because of the themes of child abuse/abduction. I have no psychology degree, but I have to think, from what I’ve read/researched, that this is an accurate portrayal of Stockholm Syndrome (in which abductees form emotional attachments to their abductors). All books that shed light on the horrific realities of child abuse are important books, even if they are extremely difficult to read. This novel leaves so much gray area that I am still scratching my head. Thought-provoking and disturbing ... I couldn't put it down. (Many have compared this book to Nabakov’s Lolita).

[Caroline · Rating 5 out of 5]

The fact that so many readers here note the unsettling experience of this book speaks to successful writing. The only way you won't feel a visceral reaction to Lamb is if you're not paying attention or not reading thoughtfully. This book is just the perfect proportion of fuckedupedness to gorgeousness, and totally riveting. As I neared the end I kept rationing my reading so it wouldn't be over so quickly. Thank you, Bonnie Nadzam, for such an amazing reading experience, and kudos on the Flaherty Dunnan First Novel Prize.

[Jackie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very strange, mesmerizing book by a relatively local author. She describes it as being told in "first-person, albeit a distant one." It is the story of a middle aged man and an the eleven year old girl whom he adopts, though most would say abducts, for a cross country ride from Chicago to the very rural and mountainous west. It's not nearly as "Lolitaish" as it sounds, though there is an element of innocence mixed with corruption to both the man and child. You cannot make assumptions as you read this book--there are many blind alleys to the narrative. Just when I'm sure something was going to transpire, the story line would shoot off in another direction I didn't anticipate at all. It isn't a mystery, but it certainly is mysterious. It is one of the most unique reading experiences I've ever had, and even now I'm hard pressed to explain to myself what the books was about, so I'm certainly not going to be able to do it for you. My suggestion is that you read it for yourself. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

[Katerina · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a crafty (yet sickening, if you think of it) first novel about solitude and manipulation, about a succession of "lambs" who become broken, tired, cunning sons of bitches. I hope poor Tom makes it out of this vicious circle, at least her name implies she is a hell of a strong girl.

Will be watching Bonnie Nazdam closely, she surely knows how to write.

[Alan · Rating 4 out of 5]

thought I might be damaged by this book, it being about the abduction (although he has 'groomed' the girl, so it isn't a forced abduction) of an 11 year old girl by a 52 year old man, but it was something other than harrowing, or even sexual in the way Lolita is. Yes the man is obsessed with Tommie's (the girl) physical presence, her feet, her freckles, her belly, but he proceeds so carefully step by step, you're not sure if there is consummation. This was more about two lonely souls trying to communicate, hiding out from the world, Lamb (the man) convincing himself that he is doing something special for Tommie, both protecting her from bullies and bad parenting, and giving her skills to cope with the hostile world. For several days they live in a bubble, he pointing out the beauty of nature, and teaching her practical skills like firelighting. His manipulation is both of the girl and others (his girlfriend from work; neighbours), and the reader (although it's not a first person narration). It's a clever, subtle book. I would say poetic (the colour yellow for example is mentioned or evoked on almost every page) but it's rather brisk too, much of it conversation. It settles deep in you, carried there by good characterisation, although you realise there's a lot more to both main characters, their histories making them who they are. Tommie of course is usually a male name, and strangely virtually all the men had female names - Jessie (although I got used to that being a male name from Breaking Bad), Alison(an elderly farmer), and Clare (a nod to Humbert Humbert's rival/enemy Clare Quilty?). Intriguing. Anyway Bonnie Nadzam is a terrific writer, deliberately provocative, but steering her own beautifully written course through dangerous territory.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bonnie Nadzam has written a book, a terrific one, that is as beautiful as it is uncomfortable. She has crafted with care a character, the eponymous David Lamb, who is charismatic as he is conniving. Shortly after attending his father’s funeral, Lamb meets Tommie in a CVS parking lot. Tommie is an 11-year old girl, all potbelly and rib cage. When Tommie approaches Lamb for a cigarette after her friends egg her on, Lamb’s reaction is to play a trick on them, making like he is kidnapping her. This happens on page 14 and my hands begin sweating and they don’t stop until I put down the book. He escorts the girl into his car but drops her off at home without harm done to her.

From this point on, Lamb and Tommie form an unlikely friendship meeting clandestinely several times over several weeks. With his father gone, his marriage dissolved, and his coworker-turned-lover, Linnie, at risk of losing her job at the firm because of her sexual involvement with David, Lamb concocts a plan to abduct Tommie to his cabin in the Rocky Mountains because “this sudden and unusual friendship—might be the only bright spot, the only break in her otherwise unscripted life.” The delusional David firmly believes the whisking away Tommie is the best thing that can happen to her. This is not hard to accomplish being that Tommie is neglected at home, self-conscious, and impressionable. Lamb buries in her mind images of undivided attention and tenderness in order to persuade her to abscond with him:

And I’ll fry you eggs early in the morning, and butter you a thick piece of cold
bread, and I’ll slice the bacon myself, and bring you hot chocolate, and you’ll
sit on the wood rail fence in your nightgown, and I’ll put my jacket over your
shoulders, and we’ll balance our plates on our knees and watch the sun come up
while we eat. And when I have to leave the house to go work you’ll wait for me,
won’t you? You’ll sit on the fence and watch the dirt road till you see me coming
back home to you.

David Lamb’s language is elegant, but the undertone is creepy, and Nadzam reaches poetic heights when writing his dialogue. Lamb is what Robert Greene categorizes as a “rake” in his book, Art of Seduction: “He chooses words for their ability to suggest, insinuate, hypnotize, elevate, infect…The Rake’s use of language is demonic because it is designed not to communicate or convey information but to persuade, flatter, stir emotion turmoil, much as the serpent in the Garden of Eden used words to lead Eve into temptation.” We get the sense that Lamb’s mistress Linnie also fell victim to his rakish words.

In the book, the myth of the West is a stand in for David Lamb’s life. Lamb builds up in Tommie’s mind the West as an idyllic place of expanse, pristine wilderness, and autonomy, but instead we get barbwire, glassless windows, and “boots caked with mud and manure.” Like Lamb’s life, the West comes short of its expectations.

The plot to the novel is straightforward and moves lyrically. Lamb and Tommy leave Chicago for the Rockies. On the road at Lamb’s insistence, they must improvise new identities to evade suspicion when they must stop in towns for food and supplies; all the while, sexual tension builds between the middle-aged man and the prepubescent girl. The novel turns into one of suspense and the author is deft in maintaining it. It culminates when their suspicious neighbor at the cabin scrutinizes Lamb’s involvement with Tommie (acting as uncle-cum-niece), all the while Linnie arrives at the cabin forcing Lamb to keep Tommie furtive in a shed for over a day. Will Tommie be extracted from a grotesque situation, or will she be left under the influence and control of Lamb?

[Jane · Rating 4 out of 5]

David Lamb is a middle-aged man who has been asked to take a little time off from his job after an affair with a much younger woman at the office. His wife has finally left him, and his father has just died. One day he is approached in the street by a provocatively dressed young girl who asks him for a cigarette. It turns out she has been put up to this on a dare from her “friends,” two attractive bullies who enjoy pushing her around. Tommie is a freckled, ordinary, lonely and neglected eleven-year-old. To give her a scare and prevent her from agreeing to such dares in the future, Lamb pushes her in his car, drives her home, and gives her a lecture.

Although he succeeds in frightening Tommie, nonetheless the next time they see each other they begin a relationship. They begin to seek each other out. Tommie is loved but neglected by her mother and her mother’s new boyfriend. Lamb feels compelled to pay her some attention, feed her, buy her a new coat to keep her warm. Slowly, their relationship builds until Lamb begins to spin out a fantasy for Tommie in which they run away and take a vacation together in the west. Eventually, the fantasy turns into reality and the pair take off in Lamb’s car after a carefully planned exit.

Lamb is the debut novel by Bonnie Nadzam. It tells the story of the car trip Tommie and David take and details their growing intimacy. Lamb is a creepy psychological study in which very little happens, and yet I still had trouble putting it down. There is no graphic sex or violence, but the increasing dread of what is going to happen next propels the story forward. David Lamb takes few steps to prevent others from seeing him with the girl and doesn’t even bother to keep their story straight. Sometimes she is his niece, while other times his daughter. Because of the main character’s incautious behavior, I became very fearful about where the story line was going.

At every step, Lamb reassures himself (but not the reader) that he isn’t doing anything wrong. Everything is being done to help Tommie, to make her a stronger and more confident girl, to give her experiences she’ll never have back home in Chicago. As I was reading Lamb, I actually reached a point where part of me really didn’t want to keep reading. However, if I put the book aside I picked it up again almost immediately.

I found Lamb a very compelling read, and now that I’ve finished the book I can’t help thinking about the characters. There are aspects of the plot that are a little thin – for example, it’s hard to believe once Tommie goes missing that someone would not have seen and reported Lamb and the girl, especially since the author even mentions the presence of security cameras – but they do not significantly undermine the believability of the book. The characters of David and Tommie feel both real and true. Lamb will get you thinking about age, love, life, and experience.

[Charlie Quimby · Rating 5 out of 5]

LAMB is a breathtaking novel that some readers will hate, which should make it a terrific book club selection.

I read it in a single day in the Kindle edition with pagination turned off, so when I reached the end I was surprised and stunned, the way you might be when a speeding car nearly hits you in the crosswalk and all you can do is watch it disappear as your heart thunders.

David Lamb is a 50-something partner in a vaguely defined business whose main occupation appears to be the anticipation, practice and concealment of sex, with practice being the least important part.

After his partner encourages him to take some time off to cool an affair he has going with a subordinate, Lamb encounters an 11-year-old girl and decides to take her along on his vacation. It is not so much an abduction as a quick reading of vulnerability followed by a slow seduction, a careful and involved grooming that suggests Lamb has done this before, if not over and over again.

It's impossible to read this book in the wake of the Jerry Sandusky scandal and not think of the parallels, the common techniques and the monumental deception of others and self.

But unlike Sandusky, who remains opaque, we get to enter Lamb's consciousness, to see how he works and how he avoids feelings of guilt. We see he's not so much a pedophile as a narcissist, and women of any age would serve him as well.

Bonnie Nadzam's brilliant rendering of Lamb also makes it impossible not consider one's own manipulative potential or past sins.

As the book unfolds, it becomes clear that part of Lamb's monstrous appeal is his storytelling, his constant checking in to make sure his tale is reaching his audience/victim, and his careful titration of himself and his affection—just enough to keep her entrapped.

Seduction, of course, is what a good novelist does, and Nadzam has left me eagerly awaiting her return.

[Katy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this in less than four hours, with a phone call in between. (I had to take a break at some point from the disturbing content.) At one point I told my friend that I had to take a break from the book I was reading. She asked, "Why?" I said, "Because I'm finding myself in the mind of a pedophile."

Lamb was lent to me by a friend who told me that it was about a pedophile. Before she read it, she had read a review on it also saying that it was about a pedophile. I'm curious as to whether either of us would have come to that conclusion alone. While I think it's obvious that Lamb's actions are inappropriate and criminal, I also think that there's a lot of gray area in the novel -- while I never questioned that Lamb's motives were disgusting, at some points I could almost see why he did what he did, or at least understand that temptation. That was the most disturbing part of reading Lamb, and what Nadzam did most successfully.

While there were some parts of the novel that I thought needed fine-tuning -- there is a very unclear section about Lamb's childhood that should reveal more -- I could very easily see this becoming a classic alongside other dark contemporary novels such as Donaghue's Room.

[Marcello S · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lolita è tipo uno dei miei tre libri preferiti. Di sempre.
Leggere una specie di sua reinterpretazione da parte di un’esordiente poteva sembrare abbastanza rischioso.

In realtà secondo me Bonnie Nadzam se l’è cavata, per via di una scrittura davvero efficace sia nel descrivere paesaggi in divenire sia nel confrontarsi con sentimenti complicati da sgranare.

Si pianta solo un pochino nel mezzo ma il finale è un lungo istante in cui il tempo collassa. [68/100]

[Tuck · Rating 5 out of 5]

a doozie debut novel. A troubled "successful" lawyer sort of kidnaps an 11 year old girl and takes her to a mountain cabin hideaway. Fantastic tension of "father/daughter" binding with humbert humbert sexual yearnings (and consummation?!?). A must for early spring/ mid-life crisis illicit love affairs lovers.

[Suad Shamma · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow, this book took me by surprise. Picking it up randomly at the bookstore I did not see it coming at all. When I read the little blurb at the back, I thought it was about two people who bring solace and comfort to one another, despite the massive age gap. In many ways, that was what happened, but not in the ways that I'd imagined! I did not think I was this naive, but hell, maybe I am.

I guess most people's first thought upon hearing of a fifty-four year old man and an eleven-year old girl is to think of Lolita-like scenarios. But honestly, I was personally thinking and expecting more of Mel Gibson in The Man Without A Face or Hugh Grant in About A Boy.

All of that being said, I enjoyed this book immensely. So much that I found myself cheering and hoping and cringing and gasping and moaning and shouting at it. In that order, yes.

Now, on the surface, you would think this is a story about David Lamb, a man in his fifties going through some sort of mid-life crisis, whose father just passed away, who's in the midst of a divorce, is estranged from his children, and is having an affair with a younger colleague. His life is a mess, and as such, he finds himself making a series of ill-advised, rash, and strange decisions. In steps eleven-year old Tommie, who was dared by her cruel friends to dress scantily and walk up to this man to ask for a cigarette. Lamb decides to teach Tommie and her friends a lesson by showing her what could have happened if he were any "other" sort of man.

Satisfied that he's scared her, he drops her off and drives away. However, that was not the end of their encounter, as they find themselves drawn to each other, they go back to that same spot they met, every day for weeks. Tommie skips school to spend time with this man, and he finds comfort in being able to inject some sort of good to this neglected girl with the dead end life ahead of her. Projecting ten or twenty years forward, he could see this girl's life mapped out, knowing exactly how she'd turn out and what kind of life she'd have. For whatever reason, Lamb feels compelled to save this girl, to give her something that would urge her to step off this path and pave a new one for herself. He feels responsible. But it also gives him a sense of well-being to be able to add some sort of positivity to her life and change it to the better.

At least, that's what he keeps telling himself.

As the plan formulates in his mind, he decides to be a father figure to this girl with a dash of a knight in shining armour. He will be the one to liberate her from the drudgery of her life, he wants to buy her nice things, show her places, teach her about nature and the way of life, help her survive on her own and find herself and one day, she will remember him and be grateful for the greatest adventure of her life.

What I found disturbing about this book, but also brilliant, is the fact that Nadzam took us into the mind of a pedophile and almost convinced us (the readers) of all his reasons and justifications. We, as readers, were manipulated by the fifty-four year old man just as much as Tommie was. A man who basically groomed and then kidnapped a child, taking her halfway across the country to an isolated cabin, all the while persuading her as well as us that it is for her own good, and it will just be for a short period of time - five days, he said.

Five days.

And I, along with Tommie, believed him. When those five days turned into two weeks, having drugged her for two days I believe (at least I think that's what happened), I began to get wary of Lamb. But he kept insisting he would take her back, several times stopping right in the middle of the road and asking her if she wanted to turn around. I really wanted to believe that he meant well, a part of me still does in a very twisted, bizarre kind of way. Nothing justifies his criminal and disgusting acts, but I couldn't help but feel manipulated by his explanations and his narration. Nadzam made us almost understand why he did what he did and the temptation, which at first he tried to suppress, but later sat justifying his desires.

I'm probably just as gullible as Tommie, but leading up to that kiss there were many uncomfortable moments for me but I still held on to the hope that all this man wanted was to give her a better life to look forward to. However, months have passed, and this sweet, ugly child became beautiful in this old man's eyes. He wooed her until she grew attached and fell in love with him, and when he does fulfill his promise to her at the end (albeit months too late), it is she who wants to stay.

And that was the saddest part of it all.

[Jenny Shank]

http://www.hcn.org/issues/44.2/a-forb...

A Forbidden Road Trip

Lamb
Bonnie Nadzam
275 pages, softcover: $15.95.
Other Press, 2011.

After his marriage dissolves over an affair with a coworker and his father dies, David Lamb drives to a parking lot near his Chicago home to think. "Nothing before him but the filthy street and bright signs announcing the limits of his world: Transmission Masters and Drive Time Financing and Drive-Thru Liquors. ... If there was something beneath, something behind, it was hidden from him." Then, a freckled, inappropriately dressed 11-year-old girl named Tommie walks up to him and says, "I'm supposed to ask you for a cigarette."

Lamb obliges Tommie and asks, "Now what do I get in exchange?" And so begins Colorado writer Bonnie Nadzam's crisp, startling and psychologically intense debut novel Lamb, which just won the prestigious Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize. Lamb sees Tommie as someone fresh, vivid and full of potential, a relief from his burnt-out and busted-up life. Tommie laps up the attention, and agrees to accompany the older man to his cabin in the Rocky Mountains.

The parallels between Lamb and Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita are evident. Both sets of characters have a similar age difference and respond to their troubles by hitting the road, moving from one hotel to another to avoid legal trouble. But Tommie is more innocent than Lolita, and although Nadzam includes several uncomfortable scenes in which boundaries are almost crossed, Lamb's intentions toward the girl are not sexual.

Instead, Lamb wants to rescue Tommie from her dispiriting urban apartment life of half neglect, with its outgrown shoes and dinners of Cap'n Crunch cereal, and to re-create his ideal childhood -- spiriting her away to the Rocky Mountains, stuffing her with nutritious food, even dressing her in an old-fashioned nightgown. He teaches her to build a campfire and takes her hiking through landscapes that Nadzam describes with characteristic precision: "The passing day was marked by ravens calling, by constant twittering of song sparrows in the trees and on the fence posts. Acres of dry grass banded by red and gold ribbons of fireweed and yellow gumweed."

Throughout the novel, Nadzam keeps the reader off-balance, veering between sympathy and repulsion for Lamb and his actions. Lamb puts an original spin on the traditional myth of the West through modern-day characters who long to be "saved" and renewed by the Rocky Mountain landscape.

[Ophelinha · Rating 4 out of 5]

L’archetipo di ninfetta, dipinto da Nabokov con pennellate magistrali, è indimenticabile e destinato, inevitabilmente, a ergersi a Musa custode di una fetta controversa della narrativa: quella narrativa che si avvicina a temi scomodi, scabrosi, abitati da creature eccezionali al limitare dell’adolescenza e creature spaventose, dagli occhi che si accendono in quell’oscurità nella quale si nascondono.

Inevitabilmente, tutti quegli autori che sceglieranno di raccontare una storia del genere (una storia sbagliata, cantava De Andrè), rientreranno, inevitabilmente, nel topos lolitesco. Se i suddetti sceglieranno poi di infarcirla di episodi ed elementi che giocano un ruolo fondamentale nella trista vicenda di Lo al mattino, Lola in pantaloni, Dolly a scuola, Dolores sulla linea tratteggiata, Lolita tra le braccia dell’ambiguo Humbert (road trip; nottate insonni in squallidi motel; balocchi profumi e vestiti acquistati en masse per aggraziarsi l’ineffabile ninfetta; loschi figuri che perseguitano i due fuggitivi e infestano l’aria che respirano con la loro invisibile presenza, o il peso della loro assenza; campeggi improvvisati; la ninfetta che si ammala nel momento meno – o più – opportuno, bruciante di febbre in un alberghetto da quattro soldi) farebbe molto déjà vu.

Qual è lo scopo di raccontare una storia del genere, archetipica, già sentita? Il punto è: far perdere al lettore le tracce. Farlo uscire dal seminato, dalla sua comfort zone. Seminare indizi nel suo sentiero, e depistarlo a ogni angolo, tra effluvi di intangibile inquietudine.
(continua su http://ophelinhapequena.com/2015/05/0...)

[Fede La Lettrice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lamb è un uomo di mezza etá con troppe domande senza risposta, troppe questioni irrisolte nel passato, un matrimonio fallito. Casualmente conosce Tommie, undicenne lentigginosa e spigolosa, sola e abituata a fare spallucce alla vita.
Intraprendono, lui e lei soli, un viaggio verso le montagne rocciose che è prima di tutto viaggio interiore.
"Quindi vedete, nulla di tutto ciò era pianificato. Era esattamente il tipo di scenario imprevedibile che si rivela piano puano, un dettaglio per volta. Il segreto è rilassare i muscoli della fronte e lasciare guidare il cuore. E non è facile come sembra."
Il libro di esordio della Nadzam è un libro molto coraggioso (anche nell'affrontare l'inevitabile paragone con "Lolita" di Nabokov) che affronta un tema delicatissimo: il rapporto ambiguo tra un uomo adulto e una ragazzina, poco più che bambina e che porta il lettore su una strada ripida e impervia; i temi che fanno da corolla e che impongono riflessioni profonde sono tanti, la fuga da se stessi e dai problemi, la fragilità, l'innocenza, le dipendenze.
La prosa è basata soprattutto sui dialoghi e su descrizioni brevi, ma intense ed evocative; lo studio dei due personaggi principali è affascinante, profondo e accurato tanto da renderli indimenticabili.
Personalmente vorrei abbracciare Tommie e rassicurarla che il mondo non è sempre così e, nonostante i suoi problemi, vorrei schiaffeggiare Lamb, che proprio non riesco a giustificare nè tollerare.

Lamb
Bonnie Nadzam
Traduzione: Leonardo Taiuti
Editore: Edizioni Clichy, collana Black Coffee
Pag: 264
Voto: 4/5

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the book that makes you feel reluctant to pick up another book, at least while the memory of "Lamb" is still fresh, in case of utter disappointment. The novel is so well-crafted and so utterly compelling you fear you have reached the zenith in the art of story-telling.

I can't yet grasp the mechanisms by which the elements of the prose serve to exert such an irresistible force; the atmosphere evoked by the way Nadzam uses description; the way Lamb so cleverly gets Tommie's attention (and ours) and holds it with the tall tales he tells; the extensive use of dialogue especially by Lamb (we get only his point of view); or the degree to which the action is unclear for the reader. Everything conspires.

That I found myself almost taken in by the way Lamb so plausibly elicits Tommie's complicity is part of Nadzam's great skill. Nowhere does she moralise.

But it is because I so much agreed with other readers who strongly felt that Tommie's life is changed forever for the worse, that what has happened is abuse, that Lamb is monstrous that I know the point of the book. That is what makes it a five star read.

[Zoe · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was horribly written and disjointed. I have a strong aversion to books that fail to provide complete sentences and this was on of those - I'm actually surprised I saw it through to the end.

In all honesty, I can't tell you what this was about other than it featured a manipulative pedophile and an 11 year old girl with not a lot going for her. Somehow the pair of them developed this 'friendship' and went away together - all the whole this disgusting beast of a man disguised the entire trip as a holiday of sorts instead of a blatant abduction. Somehow the two 'fell in love'. Then he returned her home and that was the end of that. From the outside, the book looks like one of those disturbing dramas with a strong message behind it. If it was, I missed it entirely.

Thankfully, nothing 'sexual' occurred during this 'friendship' between the man and the child but there were strong implications throughout and I found it simply sickening and not a lot else. There was no reason for this book. No lesson to learn. Nothing. Just odd, sick and terribly written.

[Simone Subliminalpop · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strano e sorprendente l’andamento del romanzo d’esordio di Bonnie Nadzam (autrice sostenuta da commenti più che favorevoli da colleghi quali Aimee Bender e T.C. Boyle). Parte molto bene, sembra poi concedersi momenti ripetitivi, quasi al limite della noia nella parte centrale, ma recupera tutto, riuscendo ad andare pure oltre, nelle ultime 50 pagine circa. È proprio in quel momento che si svela appieno come le scelte stilistiche della scrittura di Bonnie Nadzam, composta per lo più da dialoghi diretti e piccole ma perfette descrizioni ambientali, siano state in grado di costruire i due personaggi principali (un uomo in crisi, esasperante nelle sue manie e le continue domande, alla ricerca di certezze, e una timida bambina che fa “spallucce”, entrambi in fuga), la loro relazione e quel senso di tensione che sembrerebbe non avere mai fine, nemmeno (o soprattutto) quando il libro verrà chiuso.

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