{"id":6751,"date":"2016-12-09T06:38:31","date_gmt":"2016-12-09T06:38:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=6751"},"modified":"2016-12-12T12:40:57","modified_gmt":"2016-12-12T12:40:57","slug":"armadillos-by-p-k-lynch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=6751","title":{"rendered":"Armadillos by P.K. Lynch"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Published by Legend Press 1 April 2016<\/strong><\/p>\n

288pp, paperback, \u00a38.99<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Lesley Glaister<\/strong><\/p>\n

Click here to buy this book<\/a><\/p>\n

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It\u2019s sometimes claimed that the techniques of method acting and of writing are similar.\u00a0 In order to fully inhabit a scripted character, an actor considers motivation, physicality, habits, likes and dislikes, but above all voice<\/em>.\u00a0 That P.K. Lynch is an actor, and that the first person voice she uses in Armadillos<\/em> is so brilliant, makes the idea of this connection irresistible.<\/p>\n

The voice of Aggie, a \u2018sub\u2019 (i.e. sub human) teenager from the wilds of Texas is raw, honest, funny, touching and above all so utterly authentic that I was startled to read in the \u2018How it all Started\u2019 section at the end of the novel that Lynch had to research how to write this American English. It’s not just that it’s authentically Texan though, it’s authentically individual, idiosyncratic, the fingerprint of a personality.\u00a0 There\u2019s an odd poetry in the simple vocabulary: \u2018his eyes like water and mud\u2019; \u2018a rash of stars measled the sky\u2019; some fantastic throw away lines: \u2018I slept in an empty water fountain and spent the time counting bats\u2019 and hardly a page goes by with at least one deliciously humorous observation: \u2018\u2026 a grizzly sort of fella, as big as any man I\u2019d seen, with a face so full of hair you could have kept rodents in there.\u2019<\/p>\n

Brought up in poverty and misery, Aggie escapes her abusive father and sets off into the world with absolutely nothing, living on her wits and the protective instincts borne of her brutal background.\u00a0 The novel grips right from the start both because it\u2019s a cracking story and because Aggie is such an immediately sympathetic character.\u00a0 Although she lies, steals and cheats almost as a reflex, it is impossible not to root for her as she hustles her way through real dangers, meeting a cast of vividly entertaining and dodgy chancers on her way.\u00a0 After a hair-raising road trip she arrives in the city of Dallas, makes friends with some squatters and settles down for a time within an eccentric household of damaged drifters amongst whom she finds friendship.\u00a0 By the end of the novel she\u2019s on the move again and has reached some clarity and the beginnings (perhaps) of peace of mind, through learning some nasty and necessary home truths.<\/p>\n

Though this ending is good and emotionally right for the book, I got the slight sense of a writer running out of steam, so that, satisfying as it is, the ending seems to come too quickly and easily after Aggie\u2019s long, hard struggle to get there.<\/p>\n

Not that the book is a struggle to read, far from it.\u00a0 I raced through it finding a treat on every page.\u00a0 It\u2019s shocking, painful, sad, hilarious and ultimately quietly profound.\u00a0 What a stunning debut.<\/p>\n

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*A 2016 Notable Book<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Lesley Glaister<\/p>\n

Brought up in poverty and misery, Aggie escapes her abusive father and sets off into the world with absolutely nothing, living on her wits and the protective instincts borne of her brutal background. The novel grips right from the start both because it\u2019s a cracking story and because Aggie is such an immediately sympathetic character. Although she lies, steals and cheats almost as a reflex, it is impossible not to root for her as she hustles her way through real dangers […] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,19,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-notable-books","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6751"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6751\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6770,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6751\/revisions\/6770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}