Lost Lambs
Distance makes the heart grow fonder. Or allows us to forget. Somewhere in the middle is just “there” — out in the ether, summoning no strong opinions one way or another.
I assume Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash — for sure the “it” book of 2026 (so far) — will fall into one of the first two categories. It’s either going to be a defining novel of the 2020s and recalled fondly as the decades roll on, or its memory is going to fizzle and whoosh away from our collective consciousness.
The movie Napoleon Dynamite came out in 2004, and Matt and I were able to get away for a quick night out thanks to my parents who watched our 9-month-old. I remember the whole scenario very distinctly — sitting in the Jane Pickens theater in Newport, wondering why we had wasted precious time with a movie that was attempting to be funny but missed the mark because, to me, it felt try-hard and cringey … and uncannily similar to the humor I shared with friends in high school and college. (In other words, it felt like the kind of lols I could generate in my own dorm room.)
Fast forward 20 years, and on my birthday, my friend Becky sent me a Napoleon Dynamite gif that made me laugh; I turned to my family and said, “OK, we’re watching Napoleon Dynamite tonight.” This time, I warmed to this tale about belonging — the most human of desires. Distance had made the heart grow fonder. (And I genuinely laughed this go around.)
In that spirit, Lost Lambs is its own tale — a very 2026 tale of “self-improvement” and the methods (such as, say, lying or ignoring reality) that humans employ to derive meaning and satisfaction. Two parents who clumsily experiment with an open marriage + three daughters looking to fill a void left by flailing parents = an enjoyable and readable fable — or parable, perhaps — doused with plenty of conspiracy theories.
It’s “quirky” in the style of Margo’s Got Money Troubles by Rufi Thorpe, which means that the humor might not land for you, as it didn’t for me initially with Napoleon Dynamite. But fat lard Tina (llama reference, just to be clear) lives on in perpetuity, so maybe Lost Lambs and its pesky gnats (IYKYK) will too.
{I’ll try to remember to reassess in 2046.}
originally published on instagram