Madeline Cash

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.

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 Shortlisted author of The Seas

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.

Rippling with humour, warmth and style, Lost Lambs turns family dysfunction into an art form. 
 
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‘Goes off like a firework. As sincere as it is funny (and it’s very funny)’ Ramona Ausubel 
 
‘Lost Lambs is wild. It struts’ Samantha Hunt 
 
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The Flynns are not alright. 
 
It’s been disastrous since Bud and Catherine opened up their marriage, and none of the Flynns can remember the last time a meal was cooked, a load of laundry done, or a social code abided by. Their daughters spiral in their own chaotic orbits: Abigail, the eldest, is dating a man in his twenties nicknamed War Crime Wes; Louise, the middle child, maintains a secret correspondence with an online terrorist; the brilliant youngest, Harper, is being sent to wilderness reform camp due to her insistence that someone – or something – is monitoring the town’s citizens. 
 
Casting a shadow across their lives, and their small coastal town, is Paul Alabaster, a nefarious local billionaire. Rumours of corruption circulate, but no one dares dig too deep. No one except Harper, whose obsession with Alabaster’s machinations sends the family hurtling into a criminal conspiracy – one that may just, finally, bring them closer together. 
 
This is an original, funny and compassionate portrait of the perverse pleasures and perils of our most intimate reality: our family. 
 
‘With a big surge of energy, Lost Lambs splits the nucleus of the American family’ Tony Tulathimutte 
 
‘Madeline Cash is a humourist in the darkly humanist tradition of George Saunders and Lorrie Moore, of Vonnegut and Twain’ Tim Kreider

Madeline Cash

Praise for Lost Lambs

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 co ...

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 character ...

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.

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 co ...

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 character ...

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.

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 co ...

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 character ...

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.

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