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    Sweet Lamb of Heaven
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    Sweet Lamb of Heaven
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    Sweet Lamb of Heaven
    Audiobook7 hours

    Sweet Lamb of Heaven

    Published by Dreamscape Media Audio

    3/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    From the Lydia Millet's chilling new novel is the first-person account of a young mother, Anna, escaping 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. 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. This double-edged and satisfying story features 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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDreamscape Media Audio
    Release dateMay 3, 2016
    ISBN9781520005713
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for Sweet Lamb of Heaven

    3/5

    94 ratings25 reviews

    What did you think?

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    • 1/5
      I thought this novel was going to be great. It was introduced as a psychological thriller that explores the world of domesticity. And it did - to a certain extent. As I kept reading this novel, I found myself struggling to keep afloat and make sense of it all. The peculiarities of Anna and the other motel inhabitants seemed extremely far-fetched and I really had no idea how it played into the larger scheme of things (even now, I feel confused about it). And while the actual behaviour and personality of Ned gave me the chills, the way the novel ended just seemed so abrupt and dissatisfying. While this novel was definitely a psychological thriller, it was also very confusing and not worth the time and effort.
    • 2/5
      i finally called it quits with just under 50 pages left, because shit i just could not do it any longer. Millet has some genuinely interesting ideas here, about language and society etc but wow, she is terrible at actually pulling those things together into a satisfactory narrative.

      the problems with this novel (and they are legion) might stem from the fact that it seems as though she just did not know what kind of novel to write. a fun thriller, or a wierd philosophical treatise on the nature of language and its place in society? so she wrote both and duct-taped them together, and didn't bother to spend the time or energy to develop either or work it into any sort of compelling narrative.

      maybeee a really good editor could have saved this trash fire but alas
    • 4/5
      I am not sure I want to give this four stars, but three doesn't seem like enough. I'm looking at some of the other folks' reviews on this book, and I'm so relieved that I'm not the only one left scratching my head. There were many things about this book that I really enjoyed and found interesting. The concept of a wife leaving her husband with their daughter--he never loved the wife, only used her for money, and openly claimed not to even want the daughter--only to have him come back after them when he decides they'll serve a purpose in his attempt at political success.... That's pretty cool/interesting. The fact that he's able to pull all sorts of strings to follow her around, manipulate things to work in his favor, etc., is pleasantly creepy. What I don't understand is the added bonus of the ?supernatural? or whatever..... Anna (our protagonist) heard voices after her daughter was born. She's drawn to a place where, it turns out, others have heard voices as well. What THAT has to do with the rest of the story is never clear....

      My biggest problem with this book is not that it doesn't seem to perfectly fit together. (Does life ever?) My problem is that, in the audio version, Lydia Millet reads the book herself. Normally I prefer when an author reads their work, because they get the tone right, they pronounce certain unique words properly, etc. But in this case, Millet has a few idiosyncrasies that just drove me bananas!!! I can only think of one at the moment: the way she pronounced the word "been", like "I had been hoping to settle down by now," or whatever..... She always pronounced it "bean", like a green bean. She's not British, she has no accent that I can detect, and she pronounces most everything else the way a midwestern American would.... but the way she'd say "BEEN" (to rhyme with "green") sent me up the wall. I seriously almost counted every time she said it and kept a tally. Have you ever selected one commonly used word in the English language and then honed in on how many times a person says it? Ugh! (My apologies to Millet--she has a soothing voice, and as I'd hoped, she clearly knew the tone of the story.... I just couldn't stand that one word, in particular.)
    • 4/5
      A really good book with some amazing quotes. I for one was not crazy about the last third of the book but it was original and kept me interested.
    • 2/5
      Anna has run away from her husband in Alaska with her young daughter Lena, and is hiding out in a spooky motel on the coast of New England. While her husband Ned had been adulterous and had ignored their child, there appears to be no reason that Anna would fear him so and have to be hiding out, instead of just filing for divorce.When Lena was born, Anna had begun having auditory hallucinations. Most of the voices she heard were speaking in an unintelligible language, although Anna understood a word here and there. Inexplicably, the voices stopped abruptly when Lena began to talk. Now at the motel Anna learns that the other guests at the motel have also heard, or are still hearing, voices. She develops friendships with the other guests, and also enters into a relationship with the town librarian.Ned in the meantime has decided that he wants to run for political office, and therefore needs a picture-perfect family at his side. His hunt for Anna and Lena gets serious. The character of Ned is not very well developed--he is just a cardboard evil villain. And he seems to have all types of knowledge of events to come in the future, and to have no problem keeping tabs on Anna.This book has been called a "metaphysical thriller." I just didn't get it. There are so many unexplainable things, including the ending. And I'm not sure what the novel is intended to be. Is it Horror? Is it Scifi? Is it a Crime novel? Is it a spiritual/New Age polemic? Is it a domestic drama?It's not that I need what I read to be totally reality-based. I read and loved Millett's Oh Pure and Radiant Heart. in which Oppenheim, Fermi et al return to life to be horrified at what has resulted from the development of nuclear technology. And, despite my reaction to Sweet Lamb of Heaven, I will still read Mermaids in Paradise. But I can't recommend this one.1 1/2 stars
    • 4/5
      Maybe our gods are as small as we are or as large, varying with the size of our empathy. Maybe when a man's mind is small his god shrinks to fit.Sweet Lamb of Heaven by Lydia Millet is an odd, difficult-to-describe book that had me from the opening pages. Part of the plot is easy to describe; after she becomes pregnant, Anna finds that her husband wants nothing to do with either of them so, when her daughter is five, they leave. Her husband Ned decides to make his career in politics and needs his family back for appearance's sake. Anna eventually finds refuge at a seaside motel in the off-season, but their safety is tenuous.The other aspects of the plot are more difficult. Anna begins hearing a voice after her daughter is born. It goes away once her daughter can speak. What keeps her from thinking it's some sort of auditory hallucination is that her husband mentions hearing it, too. Then she finds other people who have had the same experience. Millet isn't a lyrical author, and while she writes well, it's not her writing or her characters or her plots that make her memorable. Millet is an author of ideas. Sweet Lamb of Heaven is a religious book, but not a theological one; she's exploring the idea of God and what that means to different people and different species. And with an emphasis on ideas, the plot becomes secondary, as does the idea of finding any answers.
    • 4/5
      Unusual and eerie, especially in the post-election strangeness of early 2017. An odd mix of metaphysics and mystery. Many questions to ponder in this literary novel of good and evil.
    • 5/5
      Intriguing story with an unusual premise. I liked the parts that Millet left unresolved, and I loved her writing.
    • 4/5
      an interesting novel about a conservative politician and the stalking of his disillusioned, escaping wife.
    • 2/5
      I received this as a review copy. I had a difficult time finishing this book and cannot find anything to recommend this book..
    • 2/5
      The first person narration of this book was just painfully dull. There was a cheesy husband/stalker plot. I hope there was more to the story than this, but I never got to that point of the book because I abandoned it pretty quickly. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher, however I wound up listening to the audiobook borrowed from the library. The author should not have elected to narrate the audiobook herself.
    • 4/5
      I'm simultaneously impressed by and kind of disappointed in this book. It has a terrific, fascinating setup and an interesting story, beautifully told. There's a touch of technophobia, which always puts me off. I did not like the ending. I think I'm going to have to read it again to have a better opinion.
    • 3/5
      This is my 2nd Lydia Millet book. The first was okay but I expected better because it had been considered for the Pulitzer Prize. I decided to give this one a shot because of a decent review. I post reviews on all the books I read good or bad. The story line is told by Anna in the first person(always a challenge for the author) who is in Alaska enduring an unhappy marriage to Ned. She runs away from him with her 6 year old daughter Lena and ends up in Maine. Ned was an indifferent husband to both her and Lena. It should be added that she had been hearing voices when Lena was born and those ended when Lena could speak. Millet trys to mesh both storylines. Ned decides to run for political office and needs to get his wife and daughter back to fill the conservative image he wants. This is where the thriller part ramps up and I enjoyed that part. The problem was the new age super natural aspect of the book did not work for me. Millet also did what many authors do- speed up the pace and plot at the end of the book to try and tie it all up. It was done badly. It is interesting how all of the people that gave this book 5 star ratings seemed to gloss over the implausibility of the plot . Millet is a talented writer in terms of style and the use of language. After 2 books from her, she doesn't isn't very entertaining. Too many other great authors out there.
    • 4/5
      I really like Lydia Millet and her weird off-kilter books. This is a story about a murder and the supernatural, about a mother and her child and a group of misfits and a Stepford politician. It's strange and hard to recommend and I understand the mixed reviews, but I think Lydia Millet is one of the most interesting people writing today because she's not afraid to take things off the beaten path. The book reminds me of Curtis Sittenfeld's Sisterland and if you liked that you'll like this too.
    • 4/5
      3.5 Shortly after her daughter Lena is born, Anna begins hearing voices. Voices that stop when the baby is asleep and then stop for food when Lena herself begins talking. But what are these voices? Signs of mental illness, paranoia, effects of too little sleep? She leaves her husband, who cares little for his wife or child or so it seems. Actually he is a sociopath, with little feeling which will come into play in a bog way. Or is he something worse? She leaves Alaska and finds herself in a little motel in Coastal Maine. The people in this hotel will also be important.Slow moving, especially the first half but somehow intriguing. Interspersed with the threads of the plot are Wiki entries about old languages, languages of animals and plants. This is not an easy book, in fact that is an understatement, it is incredibly complicated. Language mixed with religious themes, a manipulating husband who seems to know all and the last part. Well like my good reads friends Chelsea stated, What did I just read? Open ended, up to your interpretation. Was what happens real or not? Have never read anything like this, but will not appeal to all. It takes quite a bit of patience but in the end I found it original, different and fascinating.ARC from publisher.
    • 3/5
      Anna is mother to 6 year old Lexi. They live in a small motel in Maine, in hiding from Anna's husband, Ned. Ned is a handsome and magnetic man. He's also humorless, cold, indifferent and a major philanderer. He didn't want their daughter and he's never shown an iota of interest in the marriage or their daughter, until he decided on a new career in politics. Now he won't stop pursuing them because he wants his picture perfect family in place for his campaign. Anna, what can I say about Anna. She is a very troubled woman. She stays in an unhappy marriage, bears a child and continues to be ignored for 4 long years before she finally decides to leave. Too weak and docile to just ask her husband for a divorce, she goes into hiding with her daughter. On top of that, the first year of her daughter's life she was hearing a mysterious voice, making her question her sanity. Spattered throughout the book are entries from Wikipedia and other research that Anna has done in trying to figure out the mysterious voice she used to hear. Her theories have run the gamut from explorations of language, consciousness, perception and psychosis to reincarnation, but she has never come to a solid conclusion. While the story of Anna and Lexi in hiding kept me reading to the end to find out what happened, I didn't find the story very plausible. I kept wondering why Anna didn't take some action against Ned He wasn't physically abusive. Sweet Lamb of Heaven is a mixture of psychological thriller and the divine? I guess...maybe...that seems to be the outcome here. I may have missed some complex meaning here, I'm not sure. All in all, I found the ending to be very anticlimactic. I want to thank the publisher (W. W. Norton & Company) for providing me with the ARC through Netgalley for an honest review.
    • 2/5
      I like the books I read to make some kind of sense, and this one definitely did not do that. The supernatural aspects of the story were incomprehensible, which is a shame, because the basic concept of the plot line was interesting. I finished it, but I would not recommend it to anyone else.
    • 2/5
      I had some issues with this book. I did enjoy it enough to stick with it until the end. Of course, this book got weirder as I went along so by the time I was ready to be done with it, I was so close to finishing that I just stuck with it. I feel that many readers will enjoy this one more than I did, but by the time I finished, I was bored, confused, and wondered if I was smart enough for this book.This book tells Anna’s story. She starts hearing voices after the birth of her daughter, Lena, and those voices disappear once Lena starts talking. Her husband, Ned, is disinterested and Anna eventually leaves him with Lena. Anna and Lena end up in a hotel in Maine with an assortment of people who share a link and do their best to support each other. When Ned decides he wants to run for office, he needs his wife and daughter back. Anna is willing to do whatever Ned wants to keep her daughter safe and there seems to be no limit as to what he can control.There were times that I felt like this book moved very slowly and there just wasn’t enough happening. Things do pick up in the second half of the book but that is where things got really weird. Anna seemed paranoid at times and I never connected with her or any of the characters. There was a whole theme surrounding language and religion that just didn’t do a lot for me. Obviously, this was not the right book for me.I decided to listen to the audiobook which was narrated by the author and I am not sure that she was the best choice to read this story. I thought that her narration was rather flat and lacked the emotion that I hope to encounter when picking up an audiobook. I did notice that there are some audible sounds, such as pages turning, at several points in the audiobook which I found distracting. Unfortunately, this is a book that I will not be recommending.I received a digital review copy of this book from W. W. Norton and Company via NetGalley and borrowed a copy of the audiobook from my local library.
    • 5/5
      I raced through a lot of this but the ending was a little unsatisfying -- not sure it fulfilled everything it set up. The prose is excellent and the plot mostly very good. Looking forward to reading her latest book next.
    • 2/5
      There will be spoilers.

      There will be complaints about what is surely the ugliest book design of any book I have ever purchased. Yes, that is HORROR MOVIE lettering superimposed on a lamb skin rug. Yes, the text is presented in the most boring font you have ever seen.

      There will be one question: what the f***?

      Look, Lydia Millet is a great writer, who has written some of the most ambitious American novels of the last two decades--not ambitious in the million-dollar-advance-900-pages-long-ohmygod way, but ambitious in the far more difficult to pull off "appealing at the level of both plot and brain" way. Her last novel, Mermaids in Paradise was like this; a great plot, wildly entertaining, smart about the relationship between marketing, profit-making, and environmental destruction; and most notably, if not most successfully, smart in having the plot make an intellectual point. At the end of MiP, it turns out that the whole enjoyable plot has been carried out while an asteroid heads towards earth. The planet will be destroyed very soon. Wait, the reader asks, why are these characters bothering to help mermaids, or bothering to profit off them? Exactly, wise Lydia Millet nods. Why are we bothering to do anything when environmental catastrophe looms? But remember, she continues, the environment is not an asteroid. We can do something about the environment...

      So, as plot, it was kind of ridiculous, but ambitious and kind of fun. Sweet Lamb of Heaven is like the last two pages of MiP, only stretched out over 250.

      The plot is standard issue divorce-stalker silliness. The conceit is fine: woman hears voices, turns out those voices are real, not in her head, she is somehow led to a hotel where other people who've heard that real voice try to make sense of it.

      If the entire novel had been them trying to make sense of it during some understated domestic disturbance, the novel would have been great. Instead, divorce stalker arrives and we're in bad hollywood slasher flick territory for rather too long. Where MiP was goofy and funny and knowingly ridiculous, SLH is po-faced and thus painful. Bad slasher flicks at last come with an ironic wink. This one comes instead, with sub-Pynchonian paranoia.

      The conclusion to SLH is foregone: the divorced husband is essentially the devil, the voice is some vaguely panpsychical God, humans have been abandoned by God but that's okay because we remember it was there once and we can work to save the planet now, whether we're religious or not.

      The sad thing is that the idea for this book is great: the place of religion in American life, how it can help or hinder, all tied up in a fabulous plot? Sounds perfect, and of course it would take about 600 pages. But this book is 250, and because the thoughts are mostly trite, the plot is dull, and none of it fits together, that feels about 230 too many.
    • 3/5
      After her daughter is born, Anna begins hearing voices; for the next year, she struggles to discern the meaning of this unexpected event. At the same time, she finds herself dealing with her unfaithful husband, Ned, who wants nothing to do with their daughter. Finally, when Lena is six, Anna decides to leave and ends up hiding from her estranged husband in a run-down motel on the coast of Maine. When Ned decides to run for political office, he sets out to reclaim his wife and daughter in order to project the proper image for the voters; his actions take a criminal turn and Anna’s tortured existence assumes nightmarish proportions . . . .The writing is profound and lyrical, the stories absorbing. The narrative intertwines the first-person account of the cat-and-mouse game between Anna and her husband with the more esoteric analysis of the voices, providing for both suspense and thoughtful consideration, but the two don’t always mesh well. While the Anna-Ned-Lena storyline builds to a chilling climax and keeps the pages turning, the intellectual examination of the phenomenon of the voices is likely to disappoint readers as it spins out to a disappointing, unimaginative refutation of intrinsic beliefs.
    • 3/5
      Anna and her six year old daughter, are hiding out in a seedy, motel in Maine. They are on the run from her husband, a cold, self-obsessed man, running for political office in Alaska. He needs his wife and child, by his side, to bolster his chances, of winning. He is calculating and relentless and is on Anna's trail...I really liked Millet's last novel, Mermaids in Paradise. A sharp, funny, satire but this one feels a bit half-baked. I like her writing but this domestic drama, doesn't quite hold together. There is a sub-plot with Anna hearing “voices”, but I did not see how that added to the story. Misses the mark...
    • 2/5
      I wanted this book to be fast-paced and thriller-y with a hint of sinister unknown, and it just wasn't. I was pulled in initially as Anna and Lena are running from Ned and we as the reader learn about the voice Anna used to hear. But after the first 50 pages, I just felt like the story plateaued and never picked up steam again. It started strong but was just disappointing in the end.
    • 4/5
      Sweet Lamb of Heaven is a psychological thriller that also is a cross over to science fiction. Another analysis calls it metaphysical thriller, that works, too. And another GR reviewer (Mary) says it is another case of the quality of the writing exceeds the quality of the story. That works too. I took a long time to engage with this book about a woman named Anna and her daughter Lena who are on the run, hiding from her husband and father of her daughter who is basically a man who she no longer cares for but he has never harmed or threatened her but yet she leaves and is hiding in this run downed motel on the seashore of Maine. The story is told through Anna and a lot of it is just her thoughts. We do not really no what is reality because I think Anna is set up as an unreliable narrator. When her daughter is born she hears noise and voices, this is the first chapter so really not a spoiler. They go away and she is happy not to think about it anymore. It is a relief. So, I did forget to say that the story starts in Alaska and Anna drives to Maine without being detected. I think that is pretty hard to accept as possible. Throughout the book there are some wikipedia bullets on different concepts and also verses from the Bible. Anna is not a religious person. These are just placed in various spots even though Anna really has no interest in the Christian God. The main question at this point for Anna is why have all these people showed up at the motel in the off season. This is also a political book, about running for office and putting the spin on to capture votes. Quotes: "I don't see how words can follow each other without implying emotion. Even the effort to control emotion is an act of words, while every effort to control words is an act of emotion." page 39"I was a child myself now, as soon as you were a victim, as soon as you were deeply hurt, you were a child again. Helplessness was the one true fountain of youth." page 127"most women probably wanted a man who acted more like a woman, I considered--more like a mother, even. You wanted to be taken care of. As long as he wasn't womanish, I thought, as long as he had central masculine characteristics such as strength and confidence, in most other respects an ideal man was more like a woman." I really did not like Anna (the narrator). There was much I found troublesome in this book and therefore I do not think the author truely achieved what she set out to do. However, this book would make a great discussion book and therefore would be a good bookclub book.
    • 2/5
      Anna decides to have the baby her husband, Ned, does not want. When Lena is born her father has very little to do with her and withdraws from his marriage. Anna on the other hand adores her daughter but these darn voices she begins hearing after her birth are very strange, unrecognizable and make no sense, at all. When Lena is 6 and now living in a run down motel in Maine with her mother, Ned comes back into their lives and manipulates Anna into agreeing to fake family love for the duration of his political campaign. Weird how Ned knows things before they happen, strange how the residents in the run down motel hear voices too. Sounds like a spooky thriller to me, until the story becomes some metaphysical gibberish that does not make any sense and becomes something like a drug induced trip that's really difficult to wrap ones head around. Edit | More