Rack of Lamb by Michael Kenyon

Michael Kenyon’s Rack of Lamb is a compelling study in voice. Organized loosely around various foods, the book brings together the voices of several women and a young girl, all from the same community but representing various social and cultural groups, subtly but powerfully joined by major social and political events. The power in Kenyon’s book, however, lies not only in his uncanny ability to articulate strongly developed characters in one or two brief passages, but also in his ability to evoke a re-examination of the relationship between the individual, the mundane and the worldly.