The Breech Lamb
Text 1: The Breech Lamb, by Nessa Prydderch
An original novel extract.
The shed smelled of wet wool and iodine. Outside, snow had been falling since tea time, and it hissed against the corrugated roof like something trying to get in. Carys knelt in the straw beside the ewe, her knees numb, her torch balanced on a bale so that its beam lay across the animal’s heaving side.
‘It’s coming wrong,’ her father said. He did not look at her. His sleeve was rolled to the shoulder and his arm was inside the ewe up to the elbow, and his face had gone the colour of candle wax. Carys watched his jaw. It clenched. It loosened. It clenched again.
The ewe groaned, a low, cracked sound, and her legs paddled at nothing. Carys held the head because she had been told to hold the head. She could feel the pulse in the soft throat racing under her fingers, racing faster than her own. Minutes stretched. The torch flickered. Then her father grunted, leaned back, and something slid into the straw in a slither of yellow and red: a lamb, limp, its eyes sealed. Nobody breathed. Her father rubbed it hard with a fistful of straw. Once. Twice. Then the tiny ribs jerked, and it sneezed.
How does Nessa Prydderch use language and structure to show the tension of the lambing?
You should use relevant subject terminology to support your answer.