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Intense, creeping, and brimming with horrific suspense, The Lamb balances carefully between the spheres of literary fiction and horror.

Hikers are vanishing. People who stray from the path are never seen again, swallowed by the wild things which live in the solitary woods. Margot is one of the wild things, a self-proclaimed changeling child, she lives with her Mama in a house that is not quite a home. They are different than the rest of the world, isolated not just by their rural home, but by their very existence. When things begin to change, Mama as much as Margot, the tenuous peace of their reality is challenged; the sticky, painful sinew that ties them together may be as easily torn as any other meat, and both of them are hungry.

Rich in imagery, The Lamb is as readable as it is experimental, neither fully embracing, nor rejecting, its literary potential. Reminiscent of Ghost Wall, Sarah Moss, and as casual with its gore as The Wasp Factory, Iain Banks, this is a novel focused on the violence of womanhood, and the softer otherness of girlhood. Rose’s strength is in her characterisation, and her willingness to go as far as she needs to to realise her themes, but I do worry that this book was plot weak in places, the story meandering. I enjoyed the overlapping readings this book inspired, like many novels on the precipice of literary fiction The Lamb is open to a few interpretations, but I didn’t feel that one rose to the surface above the others, sometimes leaving me confused as to which metaphors, which ideas, were those intended by the author. This, for me, is what holds this back from its full literary potential – although authorial intent should not restrict one’s reading, the confusion of the ideas, the way one reading upset another, made interpreting this story difficult.

This also struggled with motif vs repetitiveness. Rose clearly has an excellent understanding of literary form, and I felt in places employed motifs well, the rabbit for example, which appears throughout the book in different places, was a fantastic motif which tied things in together, drawing connections between events and individuals. Other things came off as repetitive, for example the description of near identical dresses, and the repeated references to ash  / the fire / the hearth. This, in my opinion, made the novel feel less polished, although no less successful in its themes overall.

I think The Lamb has a lot to say, and I can imagine it will inspire a devoted and enthused readership. Rose is an undeniable talent. That being said, I worry the ambition of this book outweighed the story delivered. I wanted a bit more, a slightly fuller narrative which could support the exceptional character building, and rich language, of this work. 3.5 stars.