Sweet Lamb of Heaven (Millet)

Book Reviews
Few novels surprise me…But Lydia Millet's Sweet Lamb of Heaven confounded me, delightfully so…I have little patience with literary novels that claim to have the propulsive momentum of a thriller, yet Millet pulls it off…The source of the mysterious voice is not the true mystery at the heart of Sweet Lamb of Heaven. Instead, it is the eternal human dilemma of what to do with knowledge once we have it. Will it lead to enlightenment or insanity? Will we be better people for it, or worse? It is Anna's voice—cool, intelligent, passionate, contradictory—that makes this novel so affecting. I resisted it initially because I was overwhelmed by my sense of dislocation, my uncertainty about where we were headed. But how I missed it when it was gone, how I yearned for it to speak to me again.
Laura Lippman - New York Times Book Review


Lydia Millet is not as popular as she should be. This novel will change that…. Her ambitious new novel, “Sweet Lamb of Heaven,” is part fast-paced thriller, part quiet meditation on the nature of God.
Lisa Zeidner - Washington Post


“[W]e have a real thriller on our hands. ... part of a higher-stakes game being played by Millet, one that will ultimately, unabashedly touch on time, beauty, horror, God, demons and the very nature of being. By novel's end... the stakes have been raised through the roof.
Laird Hunt - Los Angeles Times


[A] hypnotic novel of psychological and philosophical suspense.
Oprah Magazine


Millet’s prose is stunning,... you’ll have a hard time putting this down.
Isabella Biedenharn - Entertainment Weekly


Millet weaves a satisfying cat and mouse game.... Her novel reads like top-notch psychological suspense...: Anna’s paranoia is smartly given an additional, possibly supernatural dimension with the unknown voice, which becomes an inextricable part of her flight. This is a page-turner from a very talented writer, and the result is a crowd-pleaser.
Publishers Weekly


Operating, as always, on multiple levels with artistic panache, emotional precision, and profound intent, Millet transforms a violent family conflict into a war of cosmic proportions over nothing less than life itself. —Donna Seaman
Booklist


Folded into this plot is the mystical tale of Anna hearing voices upon Lena's birth, which leads her to others like her and the understanding that deep language belongs to all sentient creatures yet generally gets lost to humans.... Compelling in parts, but with Anna's very real battles with Ned deflected by fuzzy meditation, not successful as a whole. —Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal


(Starred review.) Millet is content to leave the woollier questions unanswered, but the thriller writer in her brings the book to a satisfying climax. A top-notch tale of domestic paranoia that owes a debt to spooky psychological page-turners like Rosemary's Baby yet is driven by Millet's particular offbeat thinking.
Kirkus Reviews