Lost Lambs begins with a gnat infestation; like a biblical punishment, a swarm has taken over the local church. Then the novel itself becomes quite literally infested, and gnats keep appearing in the language, infecting words such as “extermignate”, “gnaturally”, “lamignate”. This slightly gimmicky touch sets the tone for Cash’s novel, a pleasurably ridiculous story about the usual American neuroses: surveillance conspiracies, terrorism, the ephemerality of youth, and the collapse of the nuclear family.
Cash’s prose flickers between the kind of ironic deadpanning to be expected of the digital-native generation, and flashes of almost disarmingly Christian sincerity – which I suppose is an inevitable reaction to years of anything earnest being hollowed out to the point of absurdity by internet memes.
The story covers a cast of interconnected characters centred on the Flynn family – there’s the father, Bud, an accounts manager at a nefarious shipping company, who becomes suicidal upon discovering that his wife Catherine has “opened up” their marriage by taking up with their neighbour, a chauvinistic ceramicist who sees her for the artist she yearns to be.
Their wayward daughters are the beautiful Abigail, who begins dating a security guard ominously named “War Crimes Wes” and Louise, who is in online-love with a jihadist terrorist named “yourstruly” who seems intent on using the chat room to groom her into an Isis bride. The youngest, most likable, is Harper, who is preternaturally intelligent and convinced the whole town is under surveillance.
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Elsewhere there’s a Musk-like billionaire managing a sort of Eyes Wide Shut-style secret society, and an errant priest who joined the clergy to atone for a distant act of vehicular manslaughter and is now obsessed with “extermignating” his church’s escalating gnat infestation. If that sounds chaotic, it is, but Cash is at her best when she really leans into the increasingly preposterous, Pynchonian rabbit holes of her plot, and the fun really starts when her register shifts from small town family drama to zany crime caper.
[ Shadow Ticket: Maybe Thomas Pynchon isn’t actually all that greatOpens in new window ]
The ending is surprisingly tender, perhaps a little too sincere – but maybe the novel’s Christianity is ultimately all part of its humour. Cash has clearly spent a lot of time in the weirdest avenues of the internet; I’ll happily follow her down whatever strange road she takes us on next.
