Armadillos: 'P.K. Lynch can tell a story deep as a wound' Jeanette Winterson

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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.

Reviews

"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, No Wonder I Take a Drink

"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

"A truly stunning debut." --Matt Bendoris, author, Killing With Confidence

"Just wonderful, haunting, real." --Fiona Shaw, actress, theater, and opera director

"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, Damascus

"P.K. Lynch can tell a story deep as a wound . . . Read this one." --Jeanette Winterson, author, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

"Powerful, gritty, and deals with some hard-hitting issues. A gut-wrenching, important book." --Doctyl Zine

"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, The Burning

"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

Author Bio

P. K. Lynch trained as an actor and her first professional job was playing Lizzie in the film of Irvine Welsh's novel, Trainspotting. After having a baby, P. K. completed her first stage play, Promise. Her second play, King of the Gypsies, played at the Edinburgh fringe, and then toured. She then enrolled on the MLitt Creative Writing programme at Glasgow University where Armadillos was awarded the Sceptre Prize for Fiction.