Rating: 
Summary: A Pleasure to Read/An Even Greater Pleasure to Hear
Review: I just finished Lamb in Love and wish that I hadn't! I will miss spending time in the little English village of Hursley getting to know Norris Lamb and Vida and Manford and all the other characters in this charming and poignant novel about hope and courage. Beautifully written with humour and warmth I found myself alternately laughing out loud and welling up with tears. A wonderful and true snapshot of the magic and drama of "ordinary lives" told with compassion and wit. A memorable book - don't miss a trip to Hursley!
Rating:
Summary: An Absolute Delight!
Review: I just finished Lamb in Love and wish that I hadn't! I will miss spending time in the little English village of Hursley getting to know Norris Lamb and Vida and Manford and all the other characters in this charming and poignant novel about hope and courage. Beautifully written with humour and warmth I found myself alternately laughing out loud and welling up with tears. A wonderful and true snapshot of the magic and drama of "ordinary lives" told with compassion and wit. A memorable book - don't miss a trip to Hursley!
Rating: 
Summary: imaginative love story
Review: I liked the way the book created a space for you to imagine and immerse yourself with one person's love for another. The relationship between Lamb and Vida felt comforting and real. Vida's mothering of Manford really brought out the positiveness in humanity. The story felt warm and inviting and prompted me to read it in candlelight with a warm steaming cup of cocoa.Lisa Nary
Rating:
Summary: What a sweet and beautiful love story!
Review: I loved this book, from beginning to end (and was sad when it was over). A must-read for romantics, and those of us looking for magic in the every day. I can't wait to read "Rose's Garden," Brown's other novel. An author I'll definitely be watching for.
Rating:
Summary: A warm, charming and affirming book
Review: I pay this book my highest compliment; I didn't want to finish reading it because I didn't want the characters to go away. What a charmer this book is and how much the author manages to say in a small, quiet way. I agree that this would make a wonderful movie of the Enchanted April type.
Rating:
Summary: An absolutely STUNNING book, one of my all-time favorites!
Review: If you love books where you feel you've entered a believable world with vivid characters (and you like a good love story as well) this is a book that shouldn't be missed. Although the characters in this one are what most would consider "ordinary", the kind of people that are almost invisible due to their plain exteriors and apparently dull lives, the reality is astounding, breathtaking. Few writers can capture so realistically the kind of passion and compelling emotions of seemingly plain folk as well as Brown has done. This is the kind of book that changes one's view of the world, so be forewarned and be prepared to be inspired, to laugh, to cry - in short, to experience everything a good book should be!
Rating:
Summary: Charming and uplifting!
Review: Only occassionally have I read book that I was sorry to see end. However, Norris, Vida, and Manford are such endearing and quirky characters that I miss them already. Brown's prose is poetic and full of emotional complexities at every turn, while her characters are fully developed and multi-dimensional. Her sense of humor is sophisticated and subtle. I highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderfully satisfying, calming, soothing book
Review: The characters of Norris, Vida, Manford and the rest of the town seem like real people. My wish is that Brown writes a sequel soon. I would love to find out how Vida's trip to Corfu was, whether Manford ever learns to speakor play the organ, whether the town gains new respect for him and whether Vida and Norris ever marry and adopt Manford from the never-present Mr. Perry
Rating:
Summary: WHIMSICAL AND HEARTWARMING - BEAUTIFULLY DONE!
Review: The golden promise of Carrie Brown's debut novel, Rose's Garden (1998) is more than fulfilled with Lamb In Love, an affecting tale of two very ordinary people transformed by the power of love.
Choosing Hursley, a small English village as her setting, Ms. Brown again writes with eloquent grace in spare, prismatic prose - an intriguing glint here, a revealing glimmer there as she artfully sketches the emotional terrain of her characters.
Fifty-five year old Norris Lamb is the village postmaster, a position he undertakes with the utmost respect and solemnity, viewing the mails as "a marvelous system of common trust," keeping "his postal scales highly polished," and employing "a new rubber stamp frequently so as to avoid smudges."
He is also a philatelist, the volunteer organist for St. Alphage,, and a self-described "...stick whom his neighbors consider a confirmed bachelor. Terrified of women, perhaps? [....](So careful with his appearance, etc.)"
But then, on the night of the 1969 American moon landing when Norris walked outside to get a closer look at the galaxy, he saw an even more remarkable sight - 41-year-old Vida Stephen dancing nearly naked in a garden. Norris had known her all his life, "But he'd never seen her like that before. He'd never seen anything like that before." And, quite suddenly, "He is Norris Lamb in love. Lamb in love."
Vida lives at Southend House, a derelict mansion, where for twenty years she has served as nanny for Manford Perry, a retarded young man who is also mute. His mother dead and his architect father often gone, Manford is totally dependent upon Vida who is devoted to him. Never having had a holiday or ventured far beyond Hursley, the routine of Vida's life is relieved only by letters from her one living relative, Uncle Laurence, who lives on Corfu, a seemingly unbelievably beautiful locale of which she can only dream.
Old enough now to be considered a spinster, Vida is viewed by fellow villagers with pity.
"But Norris knows - he believes he alone knows - what is there to be rescued and revived. He imagines that he sees what others, lacking the wondrous prism of his passion, cannot."
The question that torments him is how he will win her.
Unable to declare himself in person, Norris enjoins fellow postmasters to help him - he pens love letters which are posted to Vida from foreign lands. He leaves bouquets of flowers on a bench that she frequents. Finally, he ventures beyond Hursley, to Winchester where he buys Vida a gift - a nightdress an intricately patterned robe of Oriental silk.
Norris finds himself emboldened by love. Not allowing "reason to interfere with the anticipation of adventure, even danger, that accompanies the matter of delivering his gift," he sneaks into Southend House and artfully arranges the robed gown on her bed.
At first puzzled then frightened by these unfamiliar attentions, Vida confides to Norris that she feels stalked. He is desolate, "utterly undone." Later thinking, "Oh, you're a bungler, Norris Lamb. Nothing but a bungler. Go on, step aside. Give it up. She won't look twice at you!"
But look twice she does, and in an unexpected way.
With a warmly wise and uplifting denouement, Carrie Brown reminds us of love's transcendency and the unquenchable strength of hope. A writer with luminous gifts, not the least of which is a painterly attention to detail, Ms. Brown has imbued the heartwarming Lamb In Love with whimsy, passion, and noble spirit
Rating:
Summary: A Pleasure to Read/An Even Greater Pleasure to Hear
Review: This is my first encounter with author Carrie Brown, but I doubt it will be my last. I do most of my "reading" on audio cassettes because I have a long commute each day. Not only did I love this poignant love story, and the author's superb way with words, but the reader, David Rintoul, gave one of the best readings I have ever heard. He captured the ache, the passion, the delight, the stuffiness, the ordinariness of Norris. And each of the other characters, with their wonderfully distinctive accents, came very much alive for me. I felt as though I knew each one of them by mid-book. I have "re-visited" the village and its folk twice now, and probably will again. I will be very much disappointed if there is not another Norris/Vida/ Manford novel. And if there is one, I do hope Rintoul will be the reader. There can be no better one!
|
