She Treads Softly: She's a Lamb!

Wednesday, March 19, 2025

She's a Lamb!

She's a Lamb! by Meredith Hambrock
4/8/25; 312 pages
ECW Press

She's a Lamb! by Meredith Hambrock is a recommended novel, highly for the right reader. It takes a deep dive into the also spiraling mind of an aspiring actress.

Jessamyn St. Germain knows she is destined to be a star in the theater who is adored by fans. At age 26 she may just be an usher at one of Vancouver’s smallest regional theaters, but Jessamyn know she will get the part of Maria in the upcoming production of The Sound of Music. When she doesn't get a role and instead is offered the position of childminder for young actors playing the von Trapp children. Her vocal coach, Renee, reinforces Jessamyn's delusion that she was tasked with doing that so she can step in and take over the role when Samantha Nguyen, the actress playing Maria fails.

The biggest drawback to the narrative is Jessamyn, who is not simply an unlikable and unreliable character, she's an intensely unhinged woman who believes she is talented in her fantasied mind. Since the whole plot unfolds through her point-of-view it is exhausting to be immersed in her magical thinking, anger, self-aggrandizement, mental-health issues, and delusion.

However, it will hold your attention, especially if you enjoy being inside the unraveling mind of a person. Sometimes the fantasy she is making up in her mind of her stellar abilities can actually be so absurd it is humorous (but usually it is disturbing). 3.5 rounded up. Thanks to ECW Press for providing me with an advance reader's copy via NetGalley. My review is voluntary and expresses my honest opinion.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.