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Lamb
‘It’s inside every parent to want to carry their child’s terror. It’s the thing they never tell you about. Watching your child grow up, watching your child learn to suffer…’
When lorry driver Dougie Alport carries out a deadly attack on his employer’s head office, the reverberations of his actions unleash a grief in his wife Maureen that threatens to reveal the secret she has spent years hiding from their son, Boyd.
Moving north to start again is Maureen’s best response. But as the walls begin to throb with mould and his mother slips from his grasp, Boyd decides to flee, finding solace with a new friend at the landfill site on the edge of town. Here, a startling discovery upends Boyd’s new life and forces him into a reckoning with his mother, her past, and his future.
A visceral story of collective memory and moss-coated horror, Lamb asks us how far we’d go to protect those we love, and how intensely we are bound to those who have come before us.
When lorry driver Dougie Alport carries out a deadly attack on his employer’s head office, the reverberations of his actions unleash a grief in his wife Maureen that threatens to reveal the secret she has spent years hiding from their son, Boyd.
Moving north to start again is Maureen’s best response. But as the walls begin to throb with mould and his mother slips from his grasp, Boyd decides to flee, finding solace with a new friend at the landfill site on the edge of town. Here, a startling discovery upends Boyd’s new life and forces him into a reckoning with his mother, her past, and his future.
A visceral story of collective memory and moss-coated horror, Lamb asks us how far we’d go to protect those we love, and how intensely we are bound to those who have come before us.
336 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 23, 2023
18 people are currently reading
2516 people want to read
About the author
Matt Hill
6 books66 followersMatt Hill grew up in Tameside, Greater Manchester.
He is the author of five novels including Philip K. Dick Award nominee Graft (Angry Robot, 2016) and The Breach (Titan Books, 2020).
His most recent novel Lamb (Dead Ink Books) was a Times best SF novel of 2023.
Instagram: @matthillwriter
He is the author of five novels including Philip K. Dick Award nominee Graft (Angry Robot, 2016) and The Breach (Titan Books, 2020).
His most recent novel Lamb (Dead Ink Books) was a Times best SF novel of 2023.
Instagram: @matthillwriter
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 50 reviews
November 26, 2023
An intriguing but cold novel of ideas that reminded me of
Infinite Detail
and Oval. The gripping opening chapter, in which a lorry driver commits an act of terrorism for reasons unknown, turns out to be something of a red herring. As does, really, the five-minutes-into-the-future setting, with things like scavenged crypto and looted supermarkets acting as background detail to the subdued tale of a uniquely dysfunctional family. This was one of those reader/book mismatch situations: Lamb just wasn’t the story I wanted it to be, which of course isn’t actually a criticism of the book, but does mean I can’t wholeheartedly recommend it. I will say, though, that one phrase from the jacket copy leaps out as particularly fitting – ‘moss-coated horror’ – there is indeed a lot of that.
September 20, 2023
Straight in as a contender for book of the year. Due out October 2023. Thanks to Harriet at Dead Ink Books for the copy.
A formidable novel. A measure of its power: Days after finishing it there’s a sense of mourning, a numbness – in the throes of nothingness and an overwhelming concern that the next read(s) will always pale in significance.
Cover design – deserves a mention, extremely alluring, a thing of beauty by Luke bird.
Lamb is a multifaceted and composite novel. Its Matt Hill’s fifth novel, a Philip K. Dick nominee, also the author of The Folded Man, Graft, Bomb and The Breach. As such, any response to it will always be lacking to sure up its beauty. Thematically: viscerally unnerving - a merging of eco and body horror, where mildew, mould and moss proliferate fetidly in response to a genetically modified family residing in Watford. It is incredibly bleak.
Its central character is Boyd, fifteen-year-old son to Dougie – a lorry driver who commits a violent act of terrorism at a nearby depot. The opening is disquieting enough, yet only a fleck to what follows as it begins to unravel a preternatural secret Boyd’s mother Maureen has ferried for years. Buried in the throes of grief, they move north, but the spores and fungus are inexorable, and it’s here the extent of their force is affirmed.
Lamb confronts and deconstructs aspects of memory, family, loss, identity and belonging. Hill is a master of deft and intense prose, effortlessly weaving vivid imagery (of emerald and purple moss, dying brown and deathly grey) together with elements of especial science-fiction horror (of auto-conception, pancreatic tissue, blastocysts, observation tanks). The plot is innovative, plaiting England’s violent underbelly of poverty, egotism, and exploitation with the complexities of parent-child trauma and its lasting psychological harm.
Beneath the otherworldly elements, Hill’s Lamb also poses many unnerving questions related to the human condition: of nightmarish technological manipulation (auto-conception, blastocysts, observation tanks), mental health crises, and an underclass falling further and further through the net.
A sublime novel and hugely recommended. See Dead Ink Books to pre-order.
A formidable novel. A measure of its power: Days after finishing it there’s a sense of mourning, a numbness – in the throes of nothingness and an overwhelming concern that the next read(s) will always pale in significance.
Cover design – deserves a mention, extremely alluring, a thing of beauty by Luke bird.
Lamb is a multifaceted and composite novel. Its Matt Hill’s fifth novel, a Philip K. Dick nominee, also the author of The Folded Man, Graft, Bomb and The Breach. As such, any response to it will always be lacking to sure up its beauty. Thematically: viscerally unnerving - a merging of eco and body horror, where mildew, mould and moss proliferate fetidly in response to a genetically modified family residing in Watford. It is incredibly bleak.
Its central character is Boyd, fifteen-year-old son to Dougie – a lorry driver who commits a violent act of terrorism at a nearby depot. The opening is disquieting enough, yet only a fleck to what follows as it begins to unravel a preternatural secret Boyd’s mother Maureen has ferried for years. Buried in the throes of grief, they move north, but the spores and fungus are inexorable, and it’s here the extent of their force is affirmed.
Lamb confronts and deconstructs aspects of memory, family, loss, identity and belonging. Hill is a master of deft and intense prose, effortlessly weaving vivid imagery (of emerald and purple moss, dying brown and deathly grey) together with elements of especial science-fiction horror (of auto-conception, pancreatic tissue, blastocysts, observation tanks). The plot is innovative, plaiting England’s violent underbelly of poverty, egotism, and exploitation with the complexities of parent-child trauma and its lasting psychological harm.
Beneath the otherworldly elements, Hill’s Lamb also poses many unnerving questions related to the human condition: of nightmarish technological manipulation (auto-conception, blastocysts, observation tanks), mental health crises, and an underclass falling further and further through the net.
A sublime novel and hugely recommended. See Dead Ink Books to pre-order.
August 12, 2023
Lamb by Matt Hill is published by Dead Ink:
Dead Ink is a small, ambitious and experimental literary publisher based in Liverpool. We believe that there are brilliant authors out there who may not yet be known or commercially viable. We see it as Dead Ink’s job to bring the most challenging and experimental new writing out from the underground and present it to our audience in the most beautiful way possible.
And this certainly comes beautifully packaged with cover art by the impressive Luke Bird.
The novel begins:
Dougie Alport was a lorry driver and proud, in that particular way northern men can be. He usually spoke to his son Boyd with indifference, his wife Maureen with his mouth full, or not at all. Lately he seemed glad to have fathered an only child; Maureen, at her most resentful, said he only liked being home when Boyd was asleep.
And the initial chapters go on to relay the aftermath, for Maureen and 15yo Boyd, from whose perspective the novel is told, from a carefully and secretly planned rampage in a Mad-Max type rebuilt version of his lorry cab that ends Dougie’s life, triggered by a redundancy notice, one rather reminiscent of the 2004 Killdozer case: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvi...
But that isn’t really what the novel is about. After Dougie’s death what at first seems like paranoia on Maureen’s behalf and a bad case of domestic mould which she leaves Boyd to tackle, turn out to be something very different. I approached this without having read the blurb but the description of the novel there is perfect as “a visceral literary-speculative novel of collective memory and moss-coated horror, that asks us how far we’d go to protect those we love and how intensely we are bound to those who have come before us.”
And by the time we are two thirds through the novel Boyd is driving a patched up van across a post-industrial England, in search of his origins, directed in part by memories that he can’t really have and in part by a baby he discovered (due to the deaths of flocks of seagulls caused by her presence) on a rubbish tip where he was working as a scavenger, a rapidly ageing infant who within days rather than months and years is walking and talking:
There was no end to the narrow roads, nor the fields beside them. In the absence of directions, he put faith in features: a mothballed wind farm whose turbines stood rotting, towers and blades bronzed in the light, the last of the sun split into red points on every nacelle; a reservoir with an enormous solar farm floating on its waters, panels shimmering like oil; woods and marshland stalked by stooped hikers; broken-up fracking gear; cold steel and rotting canvas behind barbed-wire fences.
…
Boyd wondered if he too might have intuited some of the way here. The thought was triggered by a bank of firs crowding a junction. T hey appeared taller, fuller, more vibrant to him than they once had – except he was sure he’d never seen them before. As he waited on a red light, he found himself trying to reconcile this sureness with a faint memory – more slippery, even, than the stranger’s face you recognise but can’t place – of passing through. It was as if he’d found inside himself a fragment of someone else’s past. Or as if another person’s memory, garbled by time, or maybe the transfer itself, had been injected into his mind. By holding such thoughts at a distance, consciously making them subconscious by continuing to look around – the road markings, the ad hoardings – it was obvious to him that there was far more to them. In full glare, however, the links degraded into mist..
I would lazily label this as Weird with a dash of Post-Industrial Folk Horror, and the agent’s comparisons to Jenni Fagan or Julia Armfield are well made while I was reminded of M John Harrison’s Goldsmiths winning The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again. Visceral, compelling and above all moving.
Dead Ink is a small, ambitious and experimental literary publisher based in Liverpool. We believe that there are brilliant authors out there who may not yet be known or commercially viable. We see it as Dead Ink’s job to bring the most challenging and experimental new writing out from the underground and present it to our audience in the most beautiful way possible.
And this certainly comes beautifully packaged with cover art by the impressive Luke Bird.
The novel begins:
Dougie Alport was a lorry driver and proud, in that particular way northern men can be. He usually spoke to his son Boyd with indifference, his wife Maureen with his mouth full, or not at all. Lately he seemed glad to have fathered an only child; Maureen, at her most resentful, said he only liked being home when Boyd was asleep.
And the initial chapters go on to relay the aftermath, for Maureen and 15yo Boyd, from whose perspective the novel is told, from a carefully and secretly planned rampage in a Mad-Max type rebuilt version of his lorry cab that ends Dougie’s life, triggered by a redundancy notice, one rather reminiscent of the 2004 Killdozer case: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvi...
But that isn’t really what the novel is about. After Dougie’s death what at first seems like paranoia on Maureen’s behalf and a bad case of domestic mould which she leaves Boyd to tackle, turn out to be something very different. I approached this without having read the blurb but the description of the novel there is perfect as “a visceral literary-speculative novel of collective memory and moss-coated horror, that asks us how far we’d go to protect those we love and how intensely we are bound to those who have come before us.”
And by the time we are two thirds through the novel Boyd is driving a patched up van across a post-industrial England, in search of his origins, directed in part by memories that he can’t really have and in part by a baby he discovered (due to the deaths of flocks of seagulls caused by her presence) on a rubbish tip where he was working as a scavenger, a rapidly ageing infant who within days rather than months and years is walking and talking:
There was no end to the narrow roads, nor the fields beside them. In the absence of directions, he put faith in features: a mothballed wind farm whose turbines stood rotting, towers and blades bronzed in the light, the last of the sun split into red points on every nacelle; a reservoir with an enormous solar farm floating on its waters, panels shimmering like oil; woods and marshland stalked by stooped hikers; broken-up fracking gear; cold steel and rotting canvas behind barbed-wire fences.
…
Boyd wondered if he too might have intuited some of the way here. The thought was triggered by a bank of firs crowding a junction. T hey appeared taller, fuller, more vibrant to him than they once had – except he was sure he’d never seen them before. As he waited on a red light, he found himself trying to reconcile this sureness with a faint memory – more slippery, even, than the stranger’s face you recognise but can’t place – of passing through. It was as if he’d found inside himself a fragment of someone else’s past. Or as if another person’s memory, garbled by time, or maybe the transfer itself, had been injected into his mind. By holding such thoughts at a distance, consciously making them subconscious by continuing to look around – the road markings, the ad hoardings – it was obvious to him that there was far more to them. In full glare, however, the links degraded into mist..
I would lazily label this as Weird with a dash of Post-Industrial Folk Horror, and the agent’s comparisons to Jenni Fagan or Julia Armfield are well made while I was reminded of M John Harrison’s Goldsmiths winning The Sunken Land Begins to Rise Again. Visceral, compelling and above all moving.
April 12, 2024
This started out very strong and atmospheric, but unfortunately the reveal took the story in a direction/trope I really hoped it would avoid.
More thoughts to come.
More thoughts to come.
October 11, 2023
As someone who doesn’t have a good relationship with their parents, this book makes me ache in crazy ways. There’s so much guilt and love and tenderness captured between generations here and I feel it all. To call this book strange is an oversimplistic undersell. The strangeness is necessary to take you where you need to go. There’s dry northern humour, complex lovable characters, images that’ll haunt you, and gorgeous sentences and insights into life, relationship, politics. I finished it in just a few sittings but found myself thinking about it for much longer.
August 17, 2023
Mycohorror* for the Anthropocene (and I wanted to like it better). It's got the right elements, especially in the ways in which weaves together exploration of post-industrial capitalism and its ecological consequences (toxic environments, landfills, etc.) and consequent themes of the Anthropocene and possible post-Anthropocene futures. And it is here that the novel's the weakest as it reaches for the most worn out sicence fiction trope to 'explain' the events that transpired. I was left with a feeling of a wasted opportunity in particular since I got my expectations very high because Dead Ink previously published marvelous The Doloriad.
*(I'm actually not sure what lifeform it is about, there are moss and mold mentioned but also plants so it can be anything including fungi though these aren't explicitely mentioned as far as I can remember but I like how 'mycohorror' sounds and might use it for a paper on horror and fungi that I want to write.)
*(I'm actually not sure what lifeform it is about, there are moss and mold mentioned but also plants so it can be anything including fungi though these aren't explicitely mentioned as far as I can remember but I like how 'mycohorror' sounds and might use it for a paper on horror and fungi that I want to write.)
January 13, 2025
Fantastic.
Alot of big ideas but with a real humanity that anchors it all.
Recommend
Alot of big ideas but with a real humanity that anchors it all.
Recommend
Read
December 21, 2023This is a good companion piece to Fernanda Trias’s Pink Slime: motherhood and mould. Lamb, somehow, is the creepier and more visceral of the two. The novel follows Boyd, an awkward sixteen-year-old who doesn’t fit in at school and whose Dad recently took his life bulldozing his lorry into his company’s head office (he’d been retrenched). But what starts as a very domestic novel stepped in a single tragic event grows increasingly weird as Boyd’s Mum becomes ever distant and mould and rotten vegetation begin to invade their house. This is John Wyndham meets Jeff Vandermeer, the sort of book where the words “flower”, “bloom”, and “blossom” have horrific connotations. At its core, though, Lamb is a story about the love between mother and son, a connection that’s more than genetic. But it’s also a disquieting novel. Not necessarily frightening, but ick-inducing. All that mould, all that rot and death, is a reminder of a sick planet twisted by our hubris and arrogance. Fantastic novel.
December 1, 2024
An intriguing opening highlighting dysfunctional family dynamics that unfortunately took a left turn into a different plot entirely.
I read the first half of the book in one sitting and then proceeded to forget about it and not pick it up for months.
I think Lamb tries really hard to encapsulate the human need to simultaneously destroy and rebuild that which we love, but I lost the point in the convoluted (though granted, well written) prose.
I really wanted to love this book but I think the expectations given from the beginning of the book were entirely different to what the book became, unfortunately.
2.5 ⭐️
I read the first half of the book in one sitting and then proceeded to forget about it and not pick it up for months.
I think Lamb tries really hard to encapsulate the human need to simultaneously destroy and rebuild that which we love, but I lost the point in the convoluted (though granted, well written) prose.
I really wanted to love this book but I think the expectations given from the beginning of the book were entirely different to what the book became, unfortunately.
2.5 ⭐️
November 4, 2023
I loved the first two thirds but started to lose focus with the baby plot. I’m not sure how much it all came together, especially with the first chapter (which was excellent). I’d definitely look out for more
October 21, 2024
Lamb is a truly astonishing read. Hill has created a story like no other by carving out a grubby and twisted fairy tale that teases flickers of hope on the edge of despair. Great books are a journey, and this one left me exhausted in all the best ways. It's hard to talk about without spoilers, but Lamb combines cosmic horror with contemporary science fiction seamlessly by using the dysfunctional family unit as its glue. Characters live in the cold peripherals of society to create underdogs we simply must root for (no pun intended). One of my reads of the year. I look forward to reading more from Hill.
June 14, 2025
I struggled to know what was going on until the very end and while it was poignant and thought provoking, the story worked better as a theory for me than it did in its novel form. But these themes were interesting: motherhood and the violence of life outside its natural course. Ultimately, this felt like a warning against playing God with science.
Hill has a mastery of descriptive language though: I felt damp the whole time I read this.
Hill has a mastery of descriptive language though: I felt damp the whole time I read this.
March 3, 2025
Really beautiful and mossy
November 6, 2024
Some eye-catching scenes of fungal/vegetal horror in this generational tale of human-plant hybrids who have to slather on the sunblock to prevent runaway photosynthesis and take obscure "suppressants" to stave off auto-composting, and at its heart the novel is expressing something queasily comforting about the parent-child bond, but the plot rambles like a briar and the near-future backdrop of supermarket looting and garbage-dump hard-drive mining is insufficiently developed. Books with teenaged protagonists should come with an advisory label, although this one is less annoying than most.
October 11, 2023
An uneven story, despite moments of poignancy I found Lamb empty, at times cartoonish, at others brooding and overly sensitive.
The father's bitcoin funded, Pimp-My-Ride style truck revamp is bizarre and being badgered by constant references to greasy, slimey, gooey things (like Sam Byers' recent Come Join Our Disease) became tiring.
The father's bitcoin funded, Pimp-My-Ride style truck revamp is bizarre and being badgered by constant references to greasy, slimey, gooey things (like Sam Byers' recent Come Join Our Disease) became tiring.
January 28, 2024
Lamb is disquieting and tense...creepy and enervating...mournful and beautiful. Sort of horror...sort of sci-fi/cli-fi...combining internalised body horror with externalised environmental degradation...a novel set in a bleak, post-post-industrial England filled with mildew and mould that endlessly accrues in the corners of houses and gardens and the lungs of its characters, mountainous trash piles growing ligaments and capillaries, people breathing out rot and infecting, decaying their surroundings...
I've read reviews comparing Lamb to Elvia Wilk's Oval or Missouri Williams's The Doloriad, which are apt enough, but I found myself, as I read, reminded more of Jenny Hval's Paradise Rot or Tricia Sullivan's Double Vision—not in any sort of derivativeness, but rather similarities in mood and atmosphere and, particularly in relation to Double Vision, the blurring of the biological, the alien and the human (alien in the sense of otherness, not necessarily other-worldliness), the boundaries of the internal body and external world, and how waste might give rise to new life.
Lamb is not an easy read. But amidst the gloom, the oppressiveness, there are brief flashes of tenderness—aching moments of familial (both chosen and biological) connection, compassion—which make Lamb readable, allows for emotional connection, engagement...as its teenaged main character, Boyd, struggles to understand and unravel the mysteries of his family, his genesis and theirs...and I won't say more than that about the plot to keep the mysteriousness, the ambiguity, just that, mysterious and ambiguous...
Thanks to Dead Ink Books and Matt Hill for the review copy of this book.
I've read reviews comparing Lamb to Elvia Wilk's Oval or Missouri Williams's The Doloriad, which are apt enough, but I found myself, as I read, reminded more of Jenny Hval's Paradise Rot or Tricia Sullivan's Double Vision—not in any sort of derivativeness, but rather similarities in mood and atmosphere and, particularly in relation to Double Vision, the blurring of the biological, the alien and the human (alien in the sense of otherness, not necessarily other-worldliness), the boundaries of the internal body and external world, and how waste might give rise to new life.
Lamb is not an easy read. But amidst the gloom, the oppressiveness, there are brief flashes of tenderness—aching moments of familial (both chosen and biological) connection, compassion—which make Lamb readable, allows for emotional connection, engagement...as its teenaged main character, Boyd, struggles to understand and unravel the mysteries of his family, his genesis and theirs...and I won't say more than that about the plot to keep the mysteriousness, the ambiguity, just that, mysterious and ambiguous...
Thanks to Dead Ink Books and Matt Hill for the review copy of this book.
June 14, 2025
Disclaimer: I could only make it to about 50% of the way through before I had to DNF.
On the whole, this book is boring. The pacing is of two minds with the story's emotional side being either incredibly slow or having a sudden change of heart with not much build-up. For example, Maureen's dissapearance in part one happens without any preamble and somehow Boyd inherently knows it has occured, feeling awfully disjointed, lazy, and confusing. On the other hand, the characters' physical actions are very blank and read like a shopping list:
"The house smelled strongly of metal and, later, cooking. By suppertime, the saucepan Joan had used to clean the man was back on the hob. Joan didn't eat much, distracted. They went back to bed, where neither of them could sleep."
It is very 'I did this, then I did that. Then I went there.' The sentence length and structure are too similar that the prose reads as monotonous. Between the dragging then the sudden switch-ups then the blunt descriptions, it is very hard to feel alligned with the characters and their perspectives.
Aiding this alienation, the characters themselves feel like tropes. There was a level of humanity to them in the first two or so chapters when they're being established but, by the 30% mark, it plateaus and their individuality is lost. They simply become awkward boy, or mysterious mother, or unconventional girl, or common bully. It doesn't help the odd YA feel the book manufactures through the clumsy dialogue and one random old woman who foretells Boyd of the mystery surrounding his mother. Yet the genre itself is difficult to parse, feeling as though there are several attempted and none of them agreeing with one another. Starting with litfic, fading to horror, having a suden burst of sci-fi, before whiplashing back to litfic, and then the cycle repeats. These genres seem to appear for a chapter or so before dissapearing completely, rather than blending or bleeding together.
The feeling of inconsistency continues throughout the general story. Early on, the narrative insinuates Boyd cannot recall his family's early caravan trips but, thirty or so pages later, he is claiming to return to the memory in times of need. It is stated multiple times that Boyd has never owned a mobile however, upon stealing a man's phone, is miraculously able to change the face ID to a passcode. The entire novel feels like the author not once reread his work before continuing writing.
All in all, this reading experience is like being spoken at rather than being told a story. I feel like the heavy sci-fi aspect of this book was not marketed and was very unfitting for the story. Perhaps it just was not for me.
On the whole, this book is boring. The pacing is of two minds with the story's emotional side being either incredibly slow or having a sudden change of heart with not much build-up. For example, Maureen's dissapearance in part one happens without any preamble and somehow Boyd inherently knows it has occured, feeling awfully disjointed, lazy, and confusing. On the other hand, the characters' physical actions are very blank and read like a shopping list:
"The house smelled strongly of metal and, later, cooking. By suppertime, the saucepan Joan had used to clean the man was back on the hob. Joan didn't eat much, distracted. They went back to bed, where neither of them could sleep."
It is very 'I did this, then I did that. Then I went there.' The sentence length and structure are too similar that the prose reads as monotonous. Between the dragging then the sudden switch-ups then the blunt descriptions, it is very hard to feel alligned with the characters and their perspectives.
Aiding this alienation, the characters themselves feel like tropes. There was a level of humanity to them in the first two or so chapters when they're being established but, by the 30% mark, it plateaus and their individuality is lost. They simply become awkward boy, or mysterious mother, or unconventional girl, or common bully. It doesn't help the odd YA feel the book manufactures through the clumsy dialogue and one random old woman who foretells Boyd of the mystery surrounding his mother. Yet the genre itself is difficult to parse, feeling as though there are several attempted and none of them agreeing with one another. Starting with litfic, fading to horror, having a suden burst of sci-fi, before whiplashing back to litfic, and then the cycle repeats. These genres seem to appear for a chapter or so before dissapearing completely, rather than blending or bleeding together.
The feeling of inconsistency continues throughout the general story. Early on, the narrative insinuates Boyd cannot recall his family's early caravan trips but, thirty or so pages later, he is claiming to return to the memory in times of need. It is stated multiple times that Boyd has never owned a mobile however, upon stealing a man's phone, is miraculously able to change the face ID to a passcode. The entire novel feels like the author not once reread his work before continuing writing.
All in all, this reading experience is like being spoken at rather than being told a story. I feel like the heavy sci-fi aspect of this book was not marketed and was very unfitting for the story. Perhaps it just was not for me.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 21, 2024
I enjoyed this odd, damp-filled horror quite a bit. My issue was it sometimes felt a little too disjointed, unsure of what it wanted to be.
I’m not sure I got Dougie’s story, couldn’t see how it fit with the rest even though it was written excellently. It seemed like a short story in itself.
I also have to say the last third dragged a lot. Somehow the road trip in the van seemed to take days and was the same and same again. It could have been cut down massively and not negatively impacted the story.
I’m didn’t really get how the mould and rot aspect was linked with the clones? Maybe because it dragged I skipped over more detailed explanations, but as far as I could tell it was just that they had been spliced with a fungi? It seemed too convenient.
I know I’ve had a few critiques there but overall, but otherwise it was very well written and I was surprised to find it has so few reviews! It reads like best-seller level work, and was a unique and interesting plot.
I’m not sure I got Dougie’s story, couldn’t see how it fit with the rest even though it was written excellently. It seemed like a short story in itself.
I also have to say the last third dragged a lot. Somehow the road trip in the van seemed to take days and was the same and same again. It could have been cut down massively and not negatively impacted the story.
I’m didn’t really get how the mould and rot aspect was linked with the clones? Maybe because it dragged I skipped over more detailed explanations, but as far as I could tell it was just that they had been spliced with a fungi? It seemed too convenient.
I know I’ve had a few critiques there but overall, but otherwise it was very well written and I was surprised to find it has so few reviews! It reads like best-seller level work, and was a unique and interesting plot.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 8, 2025
3.5 stars! A really interesting novel but ultimately not something that blew me away.
Lamb follows a boy named Boyd, whose father commits an act of terrorism in the first chapter, killing himself in the process. After his father's death, Boyd's mother starts to change. And mold starts growing on the walls.
This book kept my interest completely and I read the bulk of it in a single day. Once things started to get going I really couldn't put it down. That said, the first chapter really doesn't have much to do with the rest of the story, and when things were finally explained it was almost kind of a let down because things had been so mysterious and built up before then. But I did still really enjoy it. The kind of book that would make a good A24 movie.
Lamb follows a boy named Boyd, whose father commits an act of terrorism in the first chapter, killing himself in the process. After his father's death, Boyd's mother starts to change. And mold starts growing on the walls.
This book kept my interest completely and I read the bulk of it in a single day. Once things started to get going I really couldn't put it down. That said, the first chapter really doesn't have much to do with the rest of the story, and when things were finally explained it was almost kind of a let down because things had been so mysterious and built up before then. But I did still really enjoy it. The kind of book that would make a good A24 movie.
December 8, 2025
Το Lamb ξεκινά με μια πραγματικά ενδιαφέρουσα δυναμική γύρω από μια δυσλειτουργική οικογένεια, όμως γρήγορα αλλάζει πορεία και καταλήγει σε μια εντελώς διαφορετική ιστορία, κάτι που με μπέρδεψε και με απομάκρυνε από το αρχικό ενδιαφέρον μου. Αν και η γραφή είναι όμορφη και υπάρχουν τρυφερές, ανθρώπινες στιγμές που δίνουν βάθος και συναίσθημα, το κείμενο συχνά γίνεται υπερβολικά περίπλοκο και χαμένο μέσα σε ατμόσφαιρα καταπίεσης. Βρήκα τον εαυτό μου να αφήνει το βιβλίο για καιρό, παρότι ήθελα να το αγαπήσω περισσότερο. Τελικά, ενώ έχει δυνατές στιγμές και αξιόλογες ιδέες, η εξέλιξη και η ασάφεια της πλοκής δεν ανταποκρίθηκαν σε αυτό που περίμενα από την αρχή.
January 15, 2024
She explained how silly, mundane things took on new meanings in the wake of death, and that it was natural to feel guilty.
Such a strange book. Reeling from grief over a horrific crime by his father, Boyd and his mother Maureen try hard to keep each other together but Maureen is also still trying to hide a secret of who she is from Boyd, a secret that's literally bursting at the seams to come out. Don't want to spoil anything but if you like subtle body horror with a coming of age story, this would be a good recommendation for you.
October 12, 2025
This book is not the book I thought it was going to be. It starts with an act of apparent random violence and then switches direction almost immediately. I really liked where it went but it wasn't what I was expecting.
There was a brief period of what seemed like endless repetition, though on reflection I don't know whether this was purposeful or not. The theme of grief and belonging is explored through eco-horror with great use made of rot and infestation. Dread is pervasive throughout the book. It's not a light read, but I would recommend it.
There was a brief period of what seemed like endless repetition, though on reflection I don't know whether this was purposeful or not. The theme of grief and belonging is explored through eco-horror with great use made of rot and infestation. Dread is pervasive throughout the book. It's not a light read, but I would recommend it.
March 12, 2025
This was interesting. I especially enjoyed the first half. I'm not sure I totally understand it yet. I think more will come when I read it for the second time. I'm not sure what the author was trying to say with all the moss and mould, but it was enjoyable just as a sci-fi without straining my mind to think over a deeper meaning. I'd like to read it again when I'm in a better headspace to be more imaginative and think about things more deeply.
January 22, 2024
This was a fun puzzle box of a book that was also moving in the way its characters forged difficult relationships in their tense, dystopian world. Parthenogenesis and the return of nature to nature, the body unwinding into moss and flora after death, and sometimes before: an almost nightmarish but always mesmerising read.
October 17, 2024
3.5
I didn’t think a book about a mould baby would make me cry at 10am.
The imagery of the house/bodies mixing with mould/fungi was stunning. Really beautiful.
I do think I would’ve preferred it without the Peterborough section, and they instead just headed to nan’s house since I like more ambiguity in literary horror.
I didn’t think a book about a mould baby would make me cry at 10am.
The imagery of the house/bodies mixing with mould/fungi was stunning. Really beautiful.
I do think I would’ve preferred it without the Peterborough section, and they instead just headed to nan’s house since I like more ambiguity in literary horror.
January 8, 2025
This book left me drained in a good way. Weird fiction and almost eerie fairy-tale this book was full of damp, dark, mud trodden atmosphere. I was compelled to read it and could not have predicted what was going to happen. Feel like I watch this book in my mind, very cinematic like watching it on the big screen of a theatre. Very thought provoking and full of wonder.
April 10, 2025
Really cool, weird mossy little book. It both does a lot and keeps it very tight and strangely small in scope for something so weird. Sometimes the obvious plot-ness of it was a bit clunky, and I wanted it to get more obviously freaky in places, but it's a really affecting story about the complexities of family. Lovely stuff!
December 20, 2025
I liked this overall, especially the first part, it was gripping, unsettling, and didn’t hold back. The story really shines when it lets things stay messy and uncomfortable. By the end, though, it felt like too much was spelled out, which took away some of the impact for me. Enjoyed Matt Hill’s writing style.
January 13, 2026
This book has a gripping opening chapter and beautifully descriptive writing, which left me feeling mossy and damp, however the story fell flat for me and I found myself not being too bothered about what was going to happen. I think I prefer faster paced books, so perhaps it was just a bit slow going for me?
Overall, just ok and not something I’ll particularly remember.
Overall, just ok and not something I’ll particularly remember.
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