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Lydia Millet

Sweet Lamb of Heaven: A Novel Paperback – May 2, 2017

by Lydia Millet (Author)

3.2 546 ratings

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Longlisted for the National Book Award for Fiction: Blending domestic thriller and psychological horror, this compelling page-turner follows a mother fleeing her estranged husband.

Lydia Millet’s previous work has been shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Likewise greeted with rapturous praise, Sweet Lamb of Heaven is a first-person account of a young mother, Anna, fleeing her cold and unfaithful husband, a businessman who’s just launched his first campaign for political office. When Ned chases Anna and their six-year-old daughter from Alaska to Maine, the two go into hiding in a run-down motel on the coast. But the longer they stay, the less the guests in the dingy motel look like typical tourists―and the less Ned resembles a typical candidate. As his pursuit of Anna and their child moves from threatening to criminal, Ned begins to alter his wife’s world in ways she never could have imagined.

A double-edged and satisfying story with a strong female protagonist, a thrilling plot, and a creeping sense of the apocalyptic, Sweet Lamb of Heaven builds to a shattering ending with profound implications for its characters―and for all of us.

Print length

256 pages
Language

English
Publisher

W. W. Norton & Company
Publication date

May 2, 2017
Dimensions

5.6 x 0.7 x 8.3 inches
ISBN-10

0393354180
ISBN-13

978-0393354188
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From the Publisher


	Dinosaurs: A Novel	A Children's Bible: A Novel	Fight No More: Stories	Sweet Lamb of Heaven: A Novel
More from Lydia Millet	"Deceptively simple and quietly lovely." ―Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire	Finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction	“Full of joys on every scale.” ―NPR	"[A] hypnotic novel of psychological and philosophical suspense." ―O Magazine


	Mermaids in Paradise: A Novel	Magnificence: A Novel	Ghost Lights: A Novel	Omnivores: A Novel
	"Hilariously funny…Lydia Millet’s novels raise the bar for boldness." ―Rene Steinke, New York Times Book Review	"[A] novel of ideas or philosophy, disguised as a portrait of one woman’s midlife upheaval." ―Laura Miller, Salon	"Surreal, darkly hilarious and profound." ―San Francisco Chronicle	An explosive satire that scorches our culture’s monstrous men and institutions.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"[A]n extraordinary metaphysical thriller from one of America’s most inventive novelists."
― Laura Miller, Slate

"A rare pleasure to read… Millet’s fine prose [is] as rich with fresh imagery as it is open-minded to life’s hidden possibilities."
― Matthew Gilbert, The Boston Globe

"Lydia Millet is not as popular as she should be. This novel will change that…Her ambitious new novel, Sweet Lamb of Heaven, is part fast-paced thriller, part quiet meditation on the nature of God."
― Lisa Zeidner, Washington Post

"Millet’s sense of pacing is acute and her prose is glittering and exact."
― New Yorker

"[A] hypnotic novel of psychological and philosophical suspense."
― O Magazine

"[A]ddictive, unsettling… sneaks in some high-minded themes (the nature of reality, the fragility of human connection) without distracting one iota from the suspense. A winner."
― People

"[A] novel so eerie, so chilling and provocative, that you might find yourself rethinking everything you thought you knew about language, belief, and where our human race might be going."
― Caroline Leavitt, San Francisco Chronicle

"[P]repare to be surprised by more than plot twists. . . . the Pulitzer finalist’s philosophical fireworks add layers of energy and mystery."
― Boris Katchka, Vulture

"Millet evinces a rare capacity to surprise and fascinate readers… Unpredictable in the best sense, Millet’s eye-opening stories and conceptions are irresistibly interesting. This may be her most beguiling and accessible creation yet."
― David Wright, The Seattle Times

"A peculiar, stirring thriller. . . . Millet has a knack for planting plainspoken, world-weary narrators in otherworldly circumstances, and Anna is one of her sharpest, most intriguingly philosophical creations."
― Kirkus Reviews

"Millet weaves a satisfying cat and mouse game… Her novel reads like top-notch psychological suspense…This is a page-turner from a very talented writer, and the result is a crowd-pleaser."
― Publishers Weekly

"Operating, as always, on multiple levels with artistic panache, emotional precision, and profound intent, Millet transforms a violent family conflict into a war of cosmic proportions over nothing less than life itself."
― Donna Seaman, Booklist

About the Author

Lydia Millet is the author of A Children's Bible, a finalist for the National Book Award and a New York Times Top 10 book of 2020, among other works of fiction. She has won awards from PEN Center USA and the American Academy of Arts and Letters and been shortlisted for the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Her story collection Love in Infant Monkeys was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. She has a master’s degree in environmental economics and lives in Tucson, Arizona, and Camden, Maine.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (May 2, 2017)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0393354180
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0393354188
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.4 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.6 x 0.7 x 8.3 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #693,963 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4,723 in Psychological Fiction (Books)
- #9,504 in Psychological Thrillers (Books)
- #28,047 in Literary Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
3.2 546 ratings

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Lydia Millet

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Lydia Millet is the author of more than a dozen novels and story collections. Known for her dark humor, idiosyncratic characters and language, and strong interest in the relationship between humans and other animals, Millet was born in Boston and grew up in Toronto, Canada. She now lives outside Tucson, Arizona with her family, where she has worked as an editor and writer at the Center for Biological Diversity since 1999. Sometimes called a "novelist of ideas," she won the PEN-USA award for fiction for her early novel My Happy Life (2002); in 2010, her story collection Love in Infant Monkeys was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and another collection, Fight No More, received an award of merit from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2019. Her recent novel A Children's Bible, about the intergenerational traumas of climate change and extinction, was a National Book Award finalist and one of the New York Times Best 10 Books of 2020.

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3.2 out of 5

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noteman

Betrays the reader....

Reviewed in the United States on June 22, 2016

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This was a page-turner with some terrific writing until about 3/4 of the way through. Then it devolved into something indiscernible. There was a sort of satisfying ending tucked in that last quarter of the book but the ending was something of a mess. When the main character suddenly finds herself at her father's funeral and has no memory of the last several months, it was downhill from there. What was real? What was hallucinitory? What was imaginary? Was any of it real? By the end, the reader cannot possibly know. It went from being a really good suspense mystery to a mishmash of unreal nonsense.

Gone Girl was a terrific book up until the very end when it betrayed the sensibilities of the reader. This book just betrayed us sooner.

14 people found this helpful

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Ellen Elizabeth

Very "now"

Reviewed in the United States on February 18, 2017

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Judging by the three-star average rating, most will either love or be confounded by and hate this novel. It took some warming up for me, and I have other quibbles about characterization and writing style. But when I finished the book, I wanted to jump back in and discuss it.

It's a novel of big (and politically relevant) ideas wrapped in a domestic thriller. The story centers on a mom and her young daughter. The mother, Anna, hears a voice. Not voices, one voice, and much of the novel's first quarter or third is spent characterizing this voice--what it is and isn't, if not why it is at all. Then, the voice stops. Anna is relieved but still puzzled. More importantly, she has to get away from her husband, who is revealing himself to be a sociopath. She sets out on her own with her daughter and shacks up at a motel in New England. Her husband doesn't care until he decides to run for a government office. He wants his estranged wife and kid around as political props. Anna resists but is threatened.

Interspersed with events are bits of research Anna has done on the voice--on language and communication across species, flora and fauna, on God and mental health, community and self-hood. She's found a small community at the isolated motel, and they contribute to her understanding. The closer she comes to making sense of things, the more danger she's in until matters reach a breaking point, not felt until she realizes just how much she's been manipulated.

Millet is posing some big questions and making assertions that ring especially true in our new extreme-right and digital environments. I haven't yet sorted through all the implications of the story, but I'm happy for the challenge.

One person found this helpful

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Sam R.

Interesting and different, but ...

Reviewed in the United States on February 12, 2020

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A friend recommended this book to me, saying it was “right up my alley.” Now that I’ve finished it, I have to think about what she meant. There’s a bad guy and a pure child. The narrator is the estranged wife of the bad guy and the mother of the child. The bad guy somehow is able to control the local police and the FBI investigators. So far fairly formulaic and interesting. But then there’s a cadre of people who, like the narrator, hear voices. Then a bunch of religious psychobabble gets mixed in to make this book different. God becomes deep language. You can decide what you think that means.

4 people found this helpful

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You can't put it down, but you can't pin it down

Reviewed in the United States on July 4, 2016

Verified Purchase

This is a book that is ripe for discussion, and liberal with its genres. It’s a captive mystery, domestic drama, horror story, and philosophical quest. It’s a book of ideas, speculative fiction, an inquiry on the nature of the divine, a psychological thriller, the sentience of language, and a subversion of literary conventions. It challenges how narrative assumptions filter reality, illustrating that no singular truths or meanings exist. Millet throws all the tropes outside of the box, enticing a reader willing to risk a heady and sometimes disorienting adventure. There are no tidy answers to the questions that it raises. Life is messy and coiled with twists, which Millet artfully spins into a spooky, propulsive tale.

So here is the premise of the plot. Anna naïvely weds handsome, cold, calculating, philandering Ned, who married her for her family’s money. Once they had a baby, Lena, he duly ignores them, chasing his greedy aspirations instead. Moreover, since Lena’s birth, Anna is burdened by hearing voices, a chronic stream of overlapping, foreign sounding chatter, except for the one English phrase, “the living spring from the dead.” The voices finally stop when Lena begins to talk, but the experience and the incomprehensible meaning of it continues to beguile Anna and influence her actions. In the meantime, the very real threat of Ned, which predominates the plot as a thriller, escalates the tension and dread.

Anna moves with Lena to a seaside motel in Maine, where the setting and the eerie resident behaviors trigger a resemblance to a Stephen King novel. At the same time, Ned demands that Anna and Lena return to Alaska to pose for family pictures and join him periodically in his campaign to run for office. He makes it clear that he can find them and sabotage their lives. Ned, the family values man and “good Christian,” is anything but. As a reader, I was caught up in Anna’s anxiety, and a sense of uncertainty crept in as I mulled over her stability.

The spectrum of reviews from one to five stars is unsurprising to me. If you expect a concrete conclusion and definitive closure, then this book may not be your cuppa. Rather, the narrative dwells in the realm of the spiritual and theosophical, the mysteries of the divine, and the enigmatic nature of language and human behavior. A wealth of interpretations are possible, based on our own experiences with the cosmic and unanswerable. I sensed Carl Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious--the innate, transcendental wisdom that guides mankind. And how does that factor into this mixed-genre novel? I won’t pretend to apprehend all the answers. However, I was absorbed by the edgy construction and provocative themes that braided myriad ideas into a scintillating story--the politics of society; the culture of family; the meaning of motherhood; the nature of the divine; lingual mysticism; neural lexicography; the tyranny of fear; and the power of humanity.

18 people found this helpful

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Clawdette

two books in one: one interesting/the other not so much

Reviewed in the United States on April 12, 2022

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One: a pretty straightforward story of a weak-willed woman in thrall to a psychopathic, manipulative husband. She and her daughter escape to a rundown motel in Maine. At that point, the narrative splits and becomes pretty unhinged. The "second" book is a Wikipedia version of badly mangled Tibetan Buddhism, chaos theory, linguistics, interspecies communication etc. I could almost see the author sitting at her computer looking up "esoteric" information to feed into this part of the book. In the end, there is a huge difference between what you read online and the actual experience or in depth study of these subjects. This book is such a mishmash of half-baked ideas and unconvincing characters with unexplained motivations that it eventually becomes unreadable. A friend told me to "stick it out to the end; it would blow my mind". Did it? not at all. I was so bored by that time I could barely finish.

One person found this helpful

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