What We’re Reading: Bonnie Nadzam’s LAMB

My new routine on my evenings off from work is to check the Lit Punch website to see if there are any readings that catch my eye. Recently, I found myself at Nina’s Cafe in St. Paul listening to Bonnie Nadzam read from her debut novel, Lamb (Other Press; 2011). I’ve been to a handful of Lit Punch events of authors I didn’t know, but until Nadzam’s reading I hadn’t been interested enough to purchase the books being featured.

Lamb is not an easy book to read, considering it’s centered on a fifty-five year old man, David Lamb, who befriends and, by all definitions, abducts an eleven year old girl named Tommie. The novel could be considered a coming of age story, albeit a twisted one in which one character comes of age much too late, and the other much too soon. I found myself at once repulsed by Lamb, and empathizing with how pained he is. The novel opens with the death of his father, his divorce, and his temporary dismissal from work. He’s stressed, alone, and unstable, which are all things I’ve felt. But that doesn’t justify his actions. It’s always a strange experience for me to enjoy a book, even as I find myself hating the main character.

What struck me during Nadzam’s reading, and again while I read on my own, was the pace of the dialogue. Nadzam could be a playwright, in the same tradition of Sam Shepard and Anton Chekhov. She has a knack for the kind of dialogue that sounds real, and compelling. Characters contradict themselves, and speak before thinking. Sometimes they take off on tangents. Take the following exchange between the Lamb and Tommie:

“Do you know how much a stamp costs?” [Lamb asked.]

“Like fifty cents?”

“In nineteen fifty-two, Tommie, a first-class stamp cost a man three cents.”

“Woah.”

“In nineteen fifty-two, Tommie, the United States federal government spent about sixty-eight billion dollars. Total.” He looked at her. “That doesn’t mean anything to you, does it?”

“Not really.”

“We need to do a better job learning about the world around us.”

“Don’t do that. Jesse does that.”

“Does what?”

“Says we when you mean me.”

Every line raises the stakes, but reveals so little information that the reader is left wondering what will happen next. As a result, the pages keep turning.

Despite the strength of the dialogue, Nadzam’s narrator is flat, almost not there at all. The narrative passages are few, and short, and there is an air of cool detachment to these sections that is at odds with how passionately alive the characters are. Nadzam is so bent on not passing judgement on her characters that she holds them at arm’s length and examines them clinically. There’s an occasional glimmer of beauty in these passages, but not enough to sustain without dialogue.

Nadzam is a talented writer, and Lamb is a compelling read, even if it falls flat at times. It’s no easy feat to write an abhorrent main character, while keeping readers engaged in the story. I can only think of a few books I’ve adored, whose main characters I hated—Tim O’Brien’s Tomcat In Love and Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina come to mind, and that’s good company to be in.

Are there any books you love even if you hate the main character?