Lamb in Love Book

In the tiny English village of Hursley, two lifelong acquaintances have never given each other a second glance. Until, on the very night of man's first moon landing, a precipitous passion alights on their middle-aged existence. Out for a stroll, Norris Lamb—postmaster, stamp collector, and church organist—spies spinster Vida Stephen dancing with glorious, uncharacteristic abandon by the moonlit fountain of the mansion where she tends the mute, retarded son of an absent employer. Norris senses a buried bravado and romance, a fragility and loneliness, that match his own. And he sets out, covertly, to woo her.

But both Norris and Vida are innocents in this endeavor. His courtship blunders down many wrong turns before it finds its unlooked-for catalyst in Manford, the gentle young man who is Vida's charge...and blossoms as a force to change three lives.

In luminous prose laced with quiet humor, Lamb in Love shows how love transforms the most ordinary and imperfect mortals.

Vida, unaware that Norris is in the throes of a wild—but unvoiced—passion, must herself decide whether to remain in the small English village where she has lived her entire life, or strike out on her own in search of a grand adventure.

Watching these two people surprised by love is Manford, the young disabled man who has been in Vida's charge for the last twenty years.  Possessed of a strange and gentle intelligence, it is through Manford that Norris and Vida finally come to recognize each other and themselves. Heartwarm- ing, madcap, utterly beautiful, LAMB IN LOVE celebrates the strange and mysterious brilliance that is love.  And it confirms Carrie Brown's status as an important and luminous talent. —>

Library Journal

Norris Lamb is in his 50s and has lived all his life in a small English village, taking over as postmaster and church organist from his mother after her death. Vida Stephen, in her early 40s and a native of the same village, has cared for Manford, the mentally disabled and mute son of the owner of the local estate, since he was an infant. Manford is now 20, and Vida has never had a holiday. And nothing would seem to suggest that anything is likely to change until Vida, captivated by the idea of men on the moon as she watches the landing on television, is drawn to the estate's garden to dance (naked) in the moonlight. Norris, out for his nightly walk, sees Vida and is "struck" (he actually thinks of it as a physical force) by love for her and sets out to show her, in small ways, that she has an admirer. This beautifully simple and eloquently written love story reminds the listener that even the simplest of lives are often very complex. Brown takes the time to develop all her characters, showing the special qualities of each--including Manford. David Rintoul's reading succeeds in expressing verbally all the nuances presented in the author's prose: Norris's yearning, Vida's love for Manford, and the eccentricities of the inhabitants of a small village in which everyone knows everyone else. Highly recommended for all collections.--Melody A. Moxley, Rowan P.L., Salisbury, NC Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.