Book Review:
Lynch's Road
by D.D. Armstrong
I was pleased to be asked to take a look at Lynch’s Road the first book of the new publishers Smash & Grab press. It is their ambition to focus on promoting work of ‘popular and urban literature prints,’ and so their striking website reclaims the well known late 19th/early 20th century magazine genre, restyling it PULP.DD Armstrong is an ambitious writer, who certainly knows how to unpack a gripping story, has written Lynch’s Road. The first, of a three-book deal that he has with Smash & Grab press.This is an exciting debut and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it. Well, that is except for the most violent of scenes, where I had to skip a few pages.Set in west London, it describes the lives of a range of characters operating in a world where drugs are viewed as the most valuable of commodities. Everyone is affected by the search and consumption of it, whether to make money, to be king of the road, to get rid of the woes of the everyday or just to escape when life deals to many hurts. The most affected, are those who are not involved in the trade, but refuse to give up on those loved ones who are.
There are two interacting narratives, one is current and immediate, the second is reflective and advisory, a warning on how things must change. The link is that three of the main characters in the first narrative are reading the second narrative in a book that through the twists of the story they’ve been handed by another character.
I think that D.D. Armstrong is strongest when writing dialogue, from the middle class ladies’ row over dinner, through to conversations between mother and daughter, between sisters, and most particularly between the friends – whether male or female, that is when Lynch’s Road is really alive with the energy and variety of London life. He flicks between the London argot, and Jamaican inflected expressions, in a completely genuine way.
The ‘preachy and ranty’ sections of ‘The Journey of a Slave’ the title of the book within the book, did not convince me. It seemed less well written, though I am left wondering if that was the point. I enjoyed the ‘walk-on’ parts given to the heroes - Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Gil Scott Heron, W.E.B. Dubois, Marcus Garvey and explorations of their theories/ideologies.
There are some brilliantly depicted villains in ‘both’ books, Bains, the white BNP nemesis of Ivan; the slave owner, and the contemporary Fagin-like boss drug dealer Sparks. All are conjured up in a horribly believable way. Even though that is a list of men, I do also think that the women (all good people or idolised as such), Jade - Ivan’s girlfriend; and her friend Tania, Alicia, Anita and Mrs Godfrey are excellent characterisations, people you can recognise.
I am encouraged to see that D.D. Armstrong is being supported and mentored by the actor, film director and screenwriter Noel Clarke of Kidulthood and Adulthood fame, they knew one another as youngsters and have kept in touch randomly over the years. Noel has written a wonderful foreword that explains the commitment of D.D. Armstrong to achieving his goals and his potential to carve out a valuable writing career for himself.
I am happy to recommend this book, because it gives credible insight into both the prison experience and the drug dealing world, the latter particularly early on in the book, is described in the kind of style that was depicted in the TV programme The Wire – that is as a commercial business, rather than pure criminal activity. It’s a stressful anxious life for all involved, and that D.D. realises this honestly, and much like The Wire, certainly does not glorify, or make it glamorous in anyway.
The one proviso to my recommendation, and I think that it is an important one, is that what lets Lynch’s Road down, is the editing and sub-editing. It really needed to be gone through with a fine-tooth comb, not to change the story structure or the characters, the pace or the dialogue; these are all strong and clear. It is just that I believe that some of the grammatical and typographical errors throughout the book are un-forgiveable. This extra work would have meant better sentence construction, and clarity around meaning and the right words being used in the correct way. The most surprising was Innocents (the fruit smoothie company) instead of innocence. Capital letters seem to appear, disappear and reappear from phrase to phrase in connecting sentences. Also, the point of the Oxford Dictionary is that it does not use Americanised spellings. How could the appearance of 'z' in a such a definition have happened?
It is clear to me that money and effort has going into the production, distribution and promotion, so why scrimp on the editing side of things? I pretty much came across all the commonly confused words and grammar mistakes, and this really is not my area at all. (I look forward to the comments pointing out my own errors.) I recognise that some mistakes are easily made, particularly with computers that think they know what you mean before you’ve barely typed it. However a professional re-reading by someone who really knows about these things - you can get that done relatively easily, or get to grips with the issues yourself – it’s your business. I still have an ancient copy of Bill Bryson’s Troublesome Words, that we were made to buy when I started PR training many years ago, and I refer to even now. And there are many other style guides that cover these wordsmith principles.
Sort it out guys, it is the boring stuff of the publishing world, but it’s what really sorts out those who know what they are doing. Especially since everything else you are doing is so fantastic.
Use this link to buy a copy of Lynch's Road, D.D. Armstrong.