Sometimes you just need nothing

She looked the way I'd always imagined women were supposed to look. At peace. Relaxed. A part of nature, like a stone or a stream.

The Lamb, by Lucy Rose, is a horror-filled coming-of-age story. It's not a spoiler to say adolescent Margot and her mother Ruth feed on the strangers who lose their way in the woods and come knocking on their door. (The details are gruesome.) One stranger makes an impression; Eden stays and infiltrates their very way of being. 

Told from Margot's perspective, it is revealed that they do not live in total isolation. Margot goes to school. The school bus stops outside of their house. But Margot is not well socialized. Her mother admonishes her to keep a low profile. Also, the household is provisioned, does not rely solely on what can be foraged in the woods. These particulars call into question why such a lifestyle would be undertaken and how it would be maintained; but somehow I bought into it and came to see how the story is an extreme if unrealistic manifestation of underlying trauma.

Ironically, once the "action" begins in the last quarter of the book, the story drags, but on the whole this was an original and engaging read.

"I wanted to be alone with my thoughts. You can have too much nice food and too much good music. Sometimes you just need nothing."