Madeline Cash's 'Lost Lambs': The Weird Turn Pro

Madeline Cash’s Lost Lambs is a family comedy so deft and winsome that only the most sterilely stolid souls could possibly refuse its charm. Cash first attracted my attention with her 2023 short story collection Earth Angel, a set of satirical stories perfectly pointed. Its tales of misbegotten adult sleepovers and PR agencies writing copy for ISIS were attuned to the moment, yet they also felt grounded in the best traditions of American humorism, with literary DNA dating back to Mark Twain. It was easy to imagine the same sensibility and style translated into the form of a novel. Lost Lambs bears out this promise.