Lost Lambs

Lost Lambs goes off like a firework. Intrigue and mystery burst outward while the family at the centre of the story implodes. What I loved most were the big, seeking hearts of Madeline Cash's characters as they reach awkwardly toward love and connection – this novel is as sincere as it is funny (and it’s very funny).

Ramona Ausubel, author of The Last Animal

Lost Lambs is wild. It struts. Madeline Cash calls us into a vividly imagined world, a Pynchon-paradise absurd enough to actually create a great, great American novel.

Samantha Hunt, Women’s Prize longlisted author of The Seas

From magical realism to magical nihilism, Madeline Cash is a voice like no other. Her novel of normal people breaking down under the most abnormal circumstances will shift the way you see the family and community into something operatic, strange and profound.

Lena Dunham

With a big surge of energy, Lost Lambs splits the nucleus of the American family – look into the flash and you'll see teen terrorists, smoking hot handywomen, and the most suicidal suburban dad this side of John Cheever. Madeline Cash likes to get dark, but fortunately the dark is where her writing glows.

Tony Tulathimutte, author of Rejection – National Book Award Finalist

The nightmare of the now has a radiant and vicious new bard, and her name is Madeline Cash.

Sam Lipsyte, author of No One Left to Come Looking for You

Like an epic road trip or a perfect dinner party, Lost Lambs is immersive and propulsive and I never wanted it to end. I can’t remember the last time a novel made me laugh so hard or feel so much tenderness for its characters, this feral chorus of voices and desires, unhinged and witty and full of longing; I wanted to take care of them, hear their whispered confessions, stay up all night talking with them in the treehouse. Madeline Cash’s prose is tuned to a singular radio channel no one else has ever found, where the music is part torch song, part power ballad, part heartbeat heard from the womb – strange and sweet and utterly surprising. I loved it. I devoured it. I can’t wait for everyone else to hear it, too.

Leslie Jamison

Lost Lambs is meticulously crafted by a writer who is clearly a dazzling and singular new voice in literary fiction, as bold and assured a debut as Zadie Smith’s White Teeth or Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Virgin Suicides. Loud, hilarious, shocking, and sensitive, we will all remember Lost Lambs as the beginning of a long and thrilling career.

Megan Nolan, author of Ordinary Human Failings

I don’t think I’ve ever read a debut that’s as funny or unexpectedly moving as LOST LAMBS. Madeline Cash’s sentences are so packed with wit, so slyly insightful about the absurdity of how we currently live, that after reading them I often found myself laughing to the point of crying, then staring up at the ceiling for five minutes in deep, existential dread. It’s a novel that smashes apart our notions of family and human connection with a sledge hammer, then rearranges the pieces into something weirdly, beautifully, staggeringly profound.

Grant Ginder, author of The People We Hate at the Wedding

A wonderful new comic voice. I’ve read entire books that contain less wit and inventiveness than a single one of Cash’s sentences, which make "lifelike" and "absurd" seem like synonyms. Her ear for dialogue is inspired. Lost Lambs had me laughing throughout—even when I was horrified — and rooting for the Flynn sisters to save us all.

Eric Puchner, New York Times bestselling author of Dream State

Cash’s debut novel has fun with everything it touches, rocketing through the points of view of the family members and other townspeople, delighting in wordplay and absurd details... With comic energy and wild plot twists to spare, a thoroughly charming debut.

Kirkus Reviews

[A] glittering debut... Cash has a finely tuned ear for the silliness of modern language... The novel is anchored in its affection for the hapless but well-meaning Flynns, whose banter is endlessly irresistible... It’s unforgettable.

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

When Lena Dunham, Megan Nolan and Leslie Jamison start slinging around superlatives, you take notice... The Bee Sting meets Birnam Wood in this rollicking saga that is at once an offbeat love story, crime caper and ode to family.

The Bookseller

Cash has a hit debut on her hands based on the guffaw-inducing, deadpan humour alone... In addition to the generous portions of humour, Cash weaves in a fun romp in which the family members get to exercise their strengths. An entertaining and breezy read reminiscent of the best of Kevin Wilson.

Booklist (starred review)

The book every insider is reading before its release... Read it and let your mind go on an adventure.

Stylist

This sparkling debut is a true tour de force: unexpected, entertaining and genuinely funny... The most wildly original book of the year.

Harper's Bazaar

Cash’s confident first novel is a surreal illustration of a small, weird American town and a small, weird nuclear family embroiled in the local goings-on. It’s most noticeably an absurdist comedy built around a twisting, capering narrative, but Lost Lambs is by turns also tender, insightful and even existential.

GQ

Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash had me entranced, aghast and laughing immediately.

Scotsman

A darkly comic and tender story about love, chaos, and survival within one unforgettable family teetering on the edge. Both funny and fiercely compassionate, this remarkable debut transforms family dysfunction into an art form.

ELE magazine

Cash has managed to cram all the goof and melodrama of an action film/coming-of-age high-school romcom into crisp, polished prose... It’s as if a Virago novel of the 1960s or ’70s — sharp, characterful, gorgeously written — were laced with the pills, vape juice and shadowy plutocracies of 21st-century America... You finish the book with the kind of smile on your face that contemporary fiction rarely leaves you with. Lost Lambs is a perky, fiendishly readable debut. Cash’s career is surely blossoming before her.

Financial Times

Delightfully cracked... a winning mixture of black comedy and innocent sweetness

Wall Street Journal

Riotously assured... [Cash] brings to mind writers as disparate as Lydia Millet, Thomas Pynchon, and Jonathan Franzen... With her debut novel, Cash has announced herself as a writer with a distinctive voice, an eye for the grotesque within the mundane, and a deep scepticism of the stories that behemoth institutions tell to justify themselves.

Boston Globe

Lost Lambs is an incredibly tender — yet also hilarious — debut. Madeline Cash explores adolescence, faith, family, and power through the lens of a tightly controlled religious community, where devotion and vulnerability exist side by side. With wildly inventive writing, Lost Lambs captures moral uncertainty and emotional awakening with remarkable precision. This novel marks the emergence of an incredible new talent in Madeline Cash.

Today Show

Energetic, hilarious, and spirited... Like Franzen before her, Cash illuminates the inner workings of a modern family . . . Lost Lambs takes a thrillingly big swing and delivers a page-turner as full of snark as it is anchored in affection.

Vulture

A clever portrait of the modern American family overflowing with charm, wit, and style. . . the big heart of this book is as spirited, and tender as, well, a little lost lamb. I could live in Cash’s mind, but I’ll settle for a few days in her smart new novel.

Playboy

A refreshingly different taken on the family drama . . .The mix of drama, humour and an undercurrent of mystery make this a compelling read.

Good Housekeeping

Every book content creator I follow is either raving about their advance copy of this book or frothing at the mouth for one; a comedic family epic, Lost Lambs is already one of the most talked about works of literary fiction for us weird girls.

Forbes

Like a quirked-up Jonathan Franzen or Paul Murray... The plot itself is surprising and wild, but you’ll stay for the extremely specific people that make up this family and town. I was laughing immediately, couldn’t help turning the page over and over again: I didn’t want to be apart from these funny little weirdos even for a minute.

Literary Hub

As a reader who describes their favourite genre as "dysfunctional family dramas", it is a unique experience to encounter one that is utterly original. And yet, Madeline Cash’s debut manages to be just that.

Amazon, Best Books of January

Every page of Cash’s debut novel is utterly absorbing, and her authorial voice is sure to win hearts and laughs. I know I’ll read whatever wry delight she pens next.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

This book captures the voice of [Cash's] generation.

Debutiful

What an absolute scream: a checkerboard of deep shadows and dazzling light, spanning suburban ennui, internet conspiracies and dysfunctional families. I can’t even begin to describe how much I loved this sharp, irreverent novel. Madeline Cash is a total hoot.

Alice Slater, author of Death of a Bookseller