The Stray Lamb

by Thorne Smith

Mr. T. Lawrence Lamb had a wife, a daughter, and a commutation ticket. He worked hard, looked at women on trains and did nothing about it, suffered his wife to play about platonically (he thought) with a Mr. Leonard Gray, who was interested in amateur theatricals. Mr. Lamb was, in a word, the Great American Commuter.

That was before he met the russett man in the woods, and woke up one morning to find himself a handsome black stallion, practically free from his wife and the world. It interfered with his business and social life, but Mr. Lamb didn't particularly mind that - and there were compensations. After that Mr. Lamb became in succession a good many different kinds of creature, all of which helped to give him a new viewpoint on the world - as for instance: a sea-gull, watching the beautiful Sandra in her less public moments.

The Stray Lamb is a hilarious book, a gay, ribald, knowing book, with a deep strain of wisdom and humanity flowing beneath the brilliance of the story.

Genres: Fantasy, Humor, Fiction, Comedy, Classic Literature

303 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1929

About the author

James Thorne Smith, Jr. was an American writer of humorous supernatural fantasy fiction under the byline Thorne Smith. He is best known today for the two Topper novels, comic fantasy fiction involving sex, much drinking and supernatural transformations. With racy illustrations, these sold millions of copies in the 1930s and were equally popular in paperbacks of the 1950s.

Smith was born in Annapolis, Maryland, the son of a Navy commodore and attended Dartmouth College. Following hungry years in Greenwich Village, working part-time as an advertising agent, Smith achieved meteoric success with the publication of Topper in 1926. He was an early resident of Free Acres, a social experimental community developed by Bolton Hall according to the economic principles of Henry George in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey. He died of a heart attack in 1934 while vacationing in Florida.

Reviews

[Henry Avila · Rating 3 out of 5]

A silly premise of a financial adviser a respectable man Mr. T. Lawrence Lamb transformed into an animal every few days. My recommendation good friends, go with the flow and it will glow. The funny thing is this was written and published just before the Wall Street crash in 1929 . Thorne Smith hugely popular in 1920s and 1930s but today forgotten except for a hand full of admirers. Not political correct in a era which sees excess drinking of alcohol not amusing still remember this was during Prohibition, however admit the author was a substantial imbiber of the first rank. All the troubles commences when The Little Rustic Man appears, a unreal person suddenly seen by Hebe the daughter of Lamb with her father. The bored man is thrilled to be stimulated even by a stranger and speaking of his dissatisfaction said too much. Tired of being human ,yes an extreme blunder the consequences will show as the future reveals. Likes animals, thus Horses, Kangaroos , Lions, no kidding Goldfish too be found sleeping in Mr. Lamb's bed in the morning . How did they get here, quite entertaining to be honest, always the reader thinking what creature found next time there and the family's comical reactions. Mrs. Lamb freaks out nobody can blame her behavior. However fundamentally the hijinks cause the highlights as tables turned over, drinks spilled , screams in the air, chases at night, crowds fleeing for their lives. The cops chase Lamb his daughter Hebe, her friend Sandra, and Mr. Melville Long , Hebe's boyfriend. Cars speeding on roads and the puzzle police can not believe what was seen in the backseat of their automobile. Nevertheless Mr. Lamb has a thirst for boos that can never be quenched, reckless driving who cares, needs a drink, whatever size his body is. Bullets fly , danger constantly around the corner , wheels screech, crazy thrills and chills Later trying to explain to a stern , seen everything judge, what happened, sorry , he's no jailbird an innocent man for sure, a pillar of the community, an all around good guy, I rest my case. It's a narrative from a century ago, society changes customs too, humans I am afraid do not. Colorful action of people in situations though weird, over the top, are very exciting in ways which can never really harm or kill, a tale gives reader a laugh or two even three not serious but diverting.

[Ginger · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hysterical romp about a man who cahnges into verious animals sort of randomly and has , as might be expected, strange adventures.

[Peter Tillman]

My old pal JD Nicolls likes it:
"A seeming chance encounter upends his perfectly conventional life. Lamb is unaccountably afflicted with a tendency to transform into animals (of one kind or another) at inconvenient moments. This leads to scandal after scandal. It also leads to a dalliance with the attractive Sandra. It’s enough to drive a man to drink. Not that Lamb (or anyone else in this novel) needed much encouragement to drink.

The book is funny, in the way that all Thorne Smith novels are funny. Not as funny now, after a hundred years of social change, but still amusing."

Copies are available online. Gutenberg Australia allegedly has one, but the site isn't responding tonite. try later? Link: https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks06/060...

[Kathleen Wells · Rating 4 out of 5]

V funny. I love Thorne Smiths books so funny.

[Linda Clifford · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book many years ago, at my mother's suggestion. It was very humorous. I have re-read it, but it was also a good many years ago. I plan to re-read it for a third time because I remember enjoying it very much. I also loved Topper and the sequel.

[Becky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Don't get me started. I love everything by Thorne Smith even though it's out-of-date and politically incorrect...

[Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

totally good and goofy.

[Michael Economy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Funny weird book.

[James Cooper · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an extremely quick, easy read. What an odd, "queer" little book. Crazy situations all from being drunk.

[Kate Davenport · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed it very much but I'm a sucker for language, and snappy conversation.

[Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very arch in the 20s novel style. Fun to see how the conventions of chracter have change since then.

[Rosemary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, the repartee, the wonderful satire but also the wisdom and understanding of humanity. A playful delight of a story.

[Two Envelopes And A Phone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bored, cuckolded Mr. Lamb wishes he could somehow experience a new life. Along comes 'the little russet man' to grant the wish, with extreme results: Mr. Lamb's next phase of a suddenly zany existence is as various animals.

'When Mr. Lamb woke up next morning he was as sick as a dog. And he was a dog.'

That kind of thing. Mr. Lamb's plucky daughter becomes aware of the situation - the first animal to inexplicably appear in the house is obviously acting like dad - and she's fine with it. Mrs. Lamb - Sapho - is already tired of this man, or whatever, she married, has a new fella and new plans for her future, hates scandal and scenes, and would just as soon murder Mr. Lamb first chance she gets...like when Mr. Lamb is something small and helpless and easily picked up and flushed down a toilet.

Sandra, a potential new lover in Mr. Lamb's life, seems to be just the sort of person that would have injected the much-needed freshness and zing Mr. Lamb wanted from life - but Sandra won't settle down in a relationship with Mr. Lamb until he stops changing into animals.

This is my favourite Thorne Smith novel, so far - and I seem to have read all the major ones, except for the Topper sequel. Mr. Lamb's adventures involve - among other ribaldry - busting a church, deflecting sexual advances from the females of various animal species, making an enemy of a turtle that was never very impressed with him as a human, kangaroo court, and bonding with Sandra while careening towards divorce from, or death at the hands of, his fed-up wife.

Thorne Smith's humorous Fantasy romps are impishly naughty, but this label for them - 'lots of sex, and drink' - is a bit misleading; for all the scantily-clad women, for all the characters lost in lust while undergoing whatever magical transformation Thorne Smith has shoved on them this time, these books are from 1920s to 1930s. Teasing and chasing, some stuff that has not dated well in terms of gender dynamics...but these are not books built on sex scenes. I especially emphasize that here, because, well, I mean we got a guy turning into animals in one of Thorne Smith's sexy comedies, and...no, we're not goin' there, if that's what you're thinking. This is not Bear by Marian Engel, or the first book in Robert Stallman's Beast Trilogy. And no, Mr. Lamb does not get intimate with a seagull, even when he is a seagull and the other party is more than interested.

On the other hand, the whole 'lots of drink' (even in the car) thing, is true. As I say, not everything in these books looks great in 2024 and so on. But these madcap, loony Fantasy excursions by Mr. Smith are meant to be funny, and overall they are funny. I did the least cringe this time around, had the most fun tracking Mr. Lamb's various adventures, and feel this is a cut above Topper (ghost novel), Turnabout (body-swap novel, like Freaky Friday etc. etc.), and Rain in the Doorway (just general zaniness in a department store, anything goes, not a lot of clothes). And now I have extirpated my guilt, over giving Night Life of the Gods (gods' statues come to life and party) a mere 2 stars.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having re-read and enjoyed The Bishop's Jaegers I decided to read another from the collection of Thorne Smith novels I have. I picked this one because I knew nothing about the plot. A couple of the others I know the premise from reading the blurb. This one I didn't and I also picked it because I thought/hoped that it might be another that wasn't specifically a "fantasy" tale and therefore might have some of the stuff I liked about Bishop's Jaegers.

So it's 50/50 on that. The Stray Lamb is the story of a man who has a strange encounter, after which he will randomly turn into different animals for a while. So it did have a fantastical element. However it also had a sympathetic central character and a romance plot that I (mostly) rooted for. Overall I found it fun.

I suspect that in their day, these books were both a bit scandalous and extreme, and thus if you liked them they probably were laugh-out-loud funny. I don't find them that but I do find this one pleasant and amusing.

I said in my last review that I would stop calling out the things that are dated. Here that's almost not necessary. Which is not to say there's nothing un-PC about it, just that the troubling parts are almost as likely to still be around today. The shrewish wife and a man who ends up with a much younger woman. She's not quite a manic pixie dream girl but heading that way.

But it's hard to take offence when the overall story is silly and the heart is in the right place (I think). Anyway I didn't.

[Howard Fielding]

Finished this book a second time after reading it years ago, but it's great fun. Like many of his other stories, it gets off to a slow start setting the stage with Mr. Lamb's humdrum life. But it literally takes off at a gallop after that.

It has all the elements of screwball comedies of its era: adultery, abundant Prohibition-era alcohol, Keystone cops style chases, confused courtroom scenes, love stories, and a magical element that mixes them all into an intoxicating cocktail. Even 90 years later, it never gets old.

[Elsbeth Kwant]

Unexpected fun - I picked this up in The Firs, Birthplace of Edgar Elgar and was sold on it at the sentence that a mother looked on her duaghter as a glacier looks on a rose (uncomprehendingly seemingly). A respectable stockbroker meets a redheaded man and turns into various animals - stallion, gull, mangy dog among others. Through these experiences he breaks the bonds of respectability- a celebration of life lived.

[Rosemary Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very humorous and delightfully irreverent book. I enjoyed it very much. Written in the 1920's. Published 1929. The writer of the Topper series. Which was made into a movie in 1937 and then into a series for 2 seasons starting in 1953. I saw reruns when a child before most of you where born. I enjoyed the movie and tv series and am very happy I have run across this gem.

[Jonathan Palfrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was published a few years after Topper, which it vaguely resembles in content and tone, although the two books have no characters in common.

As in Topper, a wealthy, respectable man in early middle age is beset by supernatural events and begins to be naughty and disruptive to society in general. He drinks too much, although so does everyone else (in the USA during the counter-productive era of the National Prohibition Act). He’s unhappily married, but an attractive young woman is unaccountably fascinated by him.

The clear difference is that there are no ghosts in this one. Instead, Mr Lamb meets a mysterious Puckish stranger who literally enchants him, so that he intermittently turns into animals of different kinds. His adventures are quite entertaining if you like that kind of thing.

I’d describe it as a good-natured romp, set in days of old, almost a century ago.