by P. K. Lynch (Author)
Shortlisted for the Amazon Rising Star Award
Longlisted for the Guardian Not the Booker prize 2016
'P.K. Lynch can tell a story deep as a wound... Read this one' -- Jeanette Winterson
Aggie is fifteen-year-old girl, a 'sub' from a 'sub' family, one of Texas' downtrodden. Her father and brother enact that 'sub'-ness on her, week in, week out. She has only the vaguest notion that there is something wrong with the abuse she endures and instead dreams of the outside world.
And then one day, Aggie walks out, and like the armadillos that flourish in Texas' barren landscape, she is a survivor...
In her escape, she gravitates to those who are just as maltreated as her. They offer Aggie the sense of family, albeit a thoroughly dysfunctional one, that she's been searching for. But when she gets embroiled in a crisis involving stolen money, Aggie soon realises there are some problems you can't run away from.
Lynch stuns in this dark debut tale chronicling the journey of a young girl's escape from an abusive family who despite all odds manages to survive. With the sense of a modern American classic, Scottish writer Lynch brings us `Armadillos', an absorbing tale with an explosive ending.
Format: Paperback
Pages: 288
Publisher: Legend Press
Published: 01 Apr 2016
ISBN 10: 178507959X
ISBN 13: 9781785079597
Book Overview: Winner of the Sceptre Prize.
'P.K. Lynch can tell a story deep as a wound... Read this one.'
'Just wonderful, haunting, real...'
-- Fiona Shaw (actress, theatre and opera director)'A truly stunning debut.'
-- Matt Bendoris'Armadillos is a book about journeys that have to be made with outcomes that can't be predicted. P.K. Lynch can tell a story as deep as a wound. A new writer unafraid of the pain scars and not scared by beauty either. Read this one.'
-- Jeanette Winterson (author)'Armadillos, as the name suggests, has a tough, often shocking, carapace of violence and exploitation, but at its core there is revealed a plangent melancholy and a warm beating heart.'
-- Laura Marney (author)'A brilliant first novel: pacy and un-put-downable. The story of a survivor - shocking, frightening, but also moving and bursting with life.'
-- Vicky Feaver (poet)'On the rarest of occasions, we see a prose author who writes sentences with the precision of a poet. Lynch has that gift, constructing lines that make me salivate... Funny, dangerous and acerbic.'
-- Joshua Mohr (author)'A raw, uneasy and beautiful read. The young and quick-witted Aggie has quite a story to tell: Lynch, through a vivid imagination and writing to match it, brings this young girl, the land, and people around her fully to life.'
-- E.K. Reeder (author'What a marvellous, dark-hearted, remarkable work. It lit my heart up... easily my favourite read in the last year by a country mile.'
-- Sandy Thompson (artistic director)'This is a sharp coming-of-age novel ripped straight from the American heartland. Aggie is a true hero for our time.'
-- Thomas Legendre (author)'Just wonderful, haunting, real... out of reach and in the bones... it's going to be so read by a generation of readers.'
-- Fiona Shaw (actress, theatre and opera director)'Powerful, gritty, and deals with some hard-hitting issues. A gut-wrenching, important book.'
-- Doctyl Zine'Every line is beautifully expressed and written with such vividness, importance and passion. A marvellous debut.'
-- Roy Williams OBE (playwright)'Filled with emotional chemistry... the prose is beautiful but the drama harrowing, which Lynch presents compellingly.'
-- Ruby McCann (chair)