Lucy Rose

A FOLK TALE. A HORROR STORY. A LOVE STORY. AN ENCHANTMENT.

Margot and Mama have lived by the forest since Margot can remember. When Margot is not at school, they spend quiet days together in their cottage, waiting for strangers to knock on their door. Strays, Mama calls them. Mama loves the strays. She feeds them wine, keeps them warm. Then she satisfies her burning appetite by picking apart their bodies.

But Mama's want is stronger than her hunger sometimes, and when a white-toothed stray named Eden turns up in the heart of a snowstorm, little Margot must confront the shifting dynamics of her family, untangle her own desires and make her own bid for freedom.

With this tender coming-of-age tale, debut novelist Lucy Rose explores how women swallow their anger, desire and animal instincts - and wrings the relationship between mother and daughter until blood drips from it.

The Lamb

Romy

Then, when the snow freezes over, everything beneath it dies. It either ices over or turns to sludge. That is what motherhood is like. Treacherous and disappointing.

‘I’ve never understood why mamas are expected to be perfect,’ she said. ‘Men are forever thought of as boys. But girls? Once we’re mamas or once we’re ripe, we can never be girls again. Not in their eyes. But we are always girls and daughters, underneath. Always.’

But I don’t feel anything like she does. She feels big and she puts her feelings everywhere. I feel small and I keep them inside.

I’d wanted to look exactly like Mama and now I did, but all I saw was ugliness.

and would you believe me if I told you these words were told to an 11 year old ?

So, maybe I don’t love you. Does that really make me a terrible mother? Lots of mothers don’t love their daughters.

still talking to her 11 year old daughter by the way

I tried so hard to love you. To feel love. Real love. But I couldn’t do it. It just didn’t come out of me.

tianna

Our love was rotten, but still looking for the burning it craved; for anything to revive the embers that had gone out long ago

“I was already imagining what she’d taste like once Eden had rubbed her with butter and rosemary and roasted her flesh in the oven. The skin was always my favourite. So much juicier than chicken skin. The stray would fall apart in my mouth. She would fill my empty belly.”

Everything happens for a reason. Something too big and too thoughtful for us to conceive. We’re just animals, like little rabbits from the woods. Humanity, Margot, it is made up. Our empathy is waning as every second passes because it’s not supposed to come so naturally to mortal creatures.

Jemima Scott

‘Boys and men always lied about the silliest things instead of saying what they really thought.’

The Lamb quotes

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