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PIGEON ENGLISH

by Stephen Kelman ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 19, 2011

Even a kid as feisty and ingratiating as Harri can overstay his welcome. A pity, because brief snatches of his embryonic...

A charming narrative voice energizes this lively first novel, which has brought enthusiastic reviews, healthy sales and a movie contract to its young British author. 

Eleven-year-old Harrison (“Harri”) Opuku has migrated with his mother and older sister Lydia from Ghana (where his father, baby brother and grandmother remain) to a “council estate” (i.e., public housing in a tower block) in the south of London. Gangs of teenagers from neighborhood estates prowl the violent streets, but Harri responds to their threats by joining forces with a friend (Jordan) as “detectives” resolved to find those responsible for the fatal stabbing of another boy. Kelman quickly gives the reader emotional identification with Harri, who is mischievous (he loves tormenting the huffy, whiny Lydia), a romantic goof (who hopes against hope that his blond schoolmate Poppy will acknowledge his existence), energetic (he’s locally renowned for his speed) and a verbal athlete who speaks in a lively multilingual argot festooned with vivid, funny locutions. When he solemnly grouses, “In England there’s a hell of different words for everything," or pronounces everything along the spectrum that runs from delightful to alarming “hutious,” there’s just no resisting the kid. Unhappily, even though the aforementioned slaying (based on the true story of the 2000 murder of a Nigerian boy) is given central stage early on, the story is depressingly underplotted and really isn’t much of a novel. Its title also refers (too coyly) to the pigeon that lands on Harri’s window ledge, which becomes a kind of protector and exemplar, clumsily signifying both freedom and flight. And when, late in the book, the bird itself swoops in to share the narrative, we sense how desperate Kelman is to fill up pages.

Pub Date: July 19, 2011

ISBN: 978-0-547-50060-7

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011

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A LITTLE LIFE

by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.

Yanagihara ( The People in the Trees , 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.  

Pub Date: March 10, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8

Page Count: 720

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015

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by Hanya Yanagihara

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PERSPECTIVES

by Elin Hilderbrand ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 16, 2015

Once again, Hilderbrand displays her gift for making us care most about her least likable characters.

Hilderbrand’s latest cautionary tale exposes the toxic—and hilarious—impact of gossip on even the most sophisticated of islands.

Eddie and Grace Pancik are known for their beautiful Nantucket home and grounds, financed with the profits from Eddie’s thriving real estate company (thriving before the crash of 2008, that is). Grace raises pedigreed hens and, with the help of hunky landscape architect Benton Coe, has achieved a lush paradise of fowl-friendly foliage. The Panciks’ teenage girls, Allegra and Hope, suffer invidious comparisons of their looks and sex appeal, although they're identical twins. The Panciks’ friends the Llewellyns (Madeline, a blocked novelist, and her airline-pilot husband, Trevor) invested $50,000, the lion’s share of Madeline’s last advance, in Eddie’s latest development. But Madeline, hard-pressed to come up with catalog copy, much less a new novel, is living in increasingly straightened circumstances, at least by Nantucket standards: she can only afford $2,000 per month on the apartment she rents in desperate hope that “a room of her own” will prime the creative pump. Construction on Eddie’s spec houses has stalled, thanks to the aforementioned crash. Grace, who has been nursing a crush on Benton for some time, gives in and a torrid affair ensues, which she ill-advisedly confides to Madeline after too many glasses of Screaming Eagle. With her agent and publisher dropping dire hints about clawing back her advance and Eddie “temporarily” unable to return the 50K, what’s a writer to do but to appropriate Grace’s adultery as fictional fodder? When Eddie is seen entering her apartment (to ask why she rented from a rival realtor), rumors spread about him and Madeline, and after the rival realtor sneaks a look at Madeline’s rough draft (which New York is hotly anticipating as “the Playboy Channel meets HGTV”), the island threatens to implode with prurient snark. No one is spared, not even Hilderbrand herself, “that other Nantucket novelist,” nor this magazine, “the notoriously cranky Kirkus.”

Pub Date: June 16, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-316-33452-5

Page Count: 384

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: May 20, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015

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Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman – review

T he story of Stephen Kelman's debut novel Pigeon English is the unlikeliest of fairytales. Not, however, for its protagonist, Harri Opoku, an 11-year-old Ghanaian immigrant caught up in gang warfare on a south London estate, but for its author. After being discovered on a literary agency's slush pile, Kelman's manuscript sparked a bidding war between 12 UK publishers and was finally secured by Bloomsbury in January 2010 for what his agents described as a "high six-figure sum".

Since then, the hype has only intensified. Even before publication, Pigeon English has appeared on best new novel lists from Waterstones to the Guardian , and its (relatively) edgy credentials were cemented when the BBC commissioned an adaptation directed by Adam Smith of the E4 teen drama Skins .

The novel's world of urban grime and casual violence, of course, could not be more distant from such media plaudits. Pigeon English opens as Harri has just moved to the Dell Farm estate with his mother and older sister, Lydia, leaving his father, grandmother and baby sister, Agnes, behind in Ghana. Along with the shock of emigration and the usual preoccupations of growing up – whether lovely blonde Poppy Morgan will sit next to him in art class, whether his Diadora trainers can outrun his classmates' Nike Air Max – he must negotiate tougher problems.

Harri's surroundings bristle with half-understood menace, most obviously from the alcoholics, dealers, petty criminals and teenage members of the Dell Farm Crew gang who shadow the estate. But gradually his sister, aunt and even his mother, forced into moral compromise in her struggle to give her children a better life, are implicated in the violence that pervades estate life.

Pigeon English , which draws heavily on the killing of 10-year-old Damilola Taylor on a Peckham estate in 2000, weaves this suffering into a murder-mystery of sorts. After the seemingly random stabbing of an older boy outside a fried chicken shop, Harri and his friend Dean turn amateur detectives, scrutinising the estate and its dysfunctional inhabitants for clues. "We're looking for the knife the dead boy got killed with," he explains. "It's called the murder weapon." Kelman has already been much praised for his ability to write from an 11-year-old's perspective, but here, as often in the first half of the novel, Harri's voice feels laboured and faux-naïf.

Elsewhere, Kelman blends Ghanaian slang such as "Asweh" ("I swear") and "hutious" ("frightening") with familiar London-ese to fresher and funnier effect. When the boys watch a local dog choke on some lager offered by its alcoholic owner: "Every sneeze made a new sneeze. Even Asbo was surprised. He couldn't stop for donkey hours."

As well as describing the estate's own "pidgin", "Pigeon English" refers to a feral pigeon Harri comes to believe is watching over him. In the novel's weakest passages, Harri's street-smart observations give way to portentous prose in which this pigeon-protector reflects on magpies, poisoned grain and the fleeting nature of human existence: "I owe it to all of you, a cheap act of confederacy against the drip-dripping of ill-captured sand." The attempt to shoehorn yet more significance into a narrative already heavy with "relevance" falls flat.

Metropolitan excitement over Pigeon English is no surprise – the young French-Algerian writer Faïza Guène created a similar stir when she introduced the Paris banlieues and their verlan slang to French literary fiction in her 2004 debut Kiffe Kiffe Demain . Pigeon English (which comes packaged with reading group discussion points such as "Has the novel in any way changed the way you think about youth gangs, knife crime or urban poverty?") does an admirable job of revealing the frightened teenage boys behind gang members' tough façades. But it is too conscious of the gulf between its subjects and its inevitably middle-class readers to be truly convincing.

• The Observer
• Knife crime
• Damilola Taylor
• Stephen Kelman

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Book Review: Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman

For once, my book group didn’t take issue with the novel which won the Booker prize this year, but when we decided to read one from the shortlist, Pigeon English was the unamimous choice even though I don’t think any of us was actually looking forward to it.   Debut author Stephen Kelman’s impetus to write this novel came from the murder in 2000 of 10 year old Damilola Taylor.   Pigeon English is the story of 11 year old Harrison Opuku who has arrived from Ghana with his midwife mother and 14 year old sister Lydia to live in a grim tower block in an unnamed part of London, leaving his father and baby sister behind.  When an older boy he knows only slightly is stabbed to death for his fried chicken, Harrison sets out to catch the killer with the help of his friends.

This is a first person narrative in Harrison’s distinctive voice.  To me, he often sounded younger than 11, but I put that down to cultural shock as he adjusts to the differences between rural Ghana and an inner city area where gangs, drugs and violence are part of everyday life.  He is equally fascinated with local gang members X-Fire and Killa and a pigeon which regularly visits the tiny balcony of his flat.  At the time of writing the novel, Stephen Kelman was still living on the deprived estate in Luton where he grew up and it shows in the convincing bleakness of the picture he paints.  Harrison represents goodness in the book but the reader wonders how long he can steer clear of the gangs, given the pressure to fit in.

Thankfully, the bleakness is mitigated by many sweet and funny moments.  We share Harri’s wide-eyed wonder at a science experiment where a row of lemons lights a bulb. When one of his much more streetwise friends asks him what his favourite gun is, he names a fancy water pistol.  He is bemused by many aspects of UK life, such as keeping house plants and not being able to eat fruit from trees.  He’s forever saying that something is ‘the funniest thing I’ve ever seen.’  I loved the way he and his family speak.  My own favourite was the rebuke, ‘Advise yourself!’  But Harri’s memories of Ghana, such as the skeletons of twin babies who are considered evil, make it very clear that life there has a dark side of its own.

Each of the chapters represents a month from March, when the murder took place, to the end of term in July, when Harrison hopes to beat off the competition to be the fastest runner in Year 7.  It is not very plot-driven, and the main interest lies with Harri’s character and perceptions.  To some extent the usual limitations of a first person child narrator apply, but in fact the author exploits this very skilfully.  One of the reasons Pigeon English is so hard-hitting is precisely the gap between Harrison’s innocence and the reader’s sickening sense of the deadly seriousness of what he is getting himself into.  When we discussed the novel, none of us felt the italicised paragraphs in the pigeon’s point of view worked.  Written in a very different style, we found them odd and distracting, but they didn’t appear often enough to be a big problem.

When I was halfway through Pigeon English , this article appeared in The Guardian.

“No time for novels – should we ditch fiction in times of crisis?

When our daily news is apocalyptic, it’s irresponsible to read made-up stories. It’s time to start reading the serious stuff instead”.

I sighed, partly in frustration, and partly out of boredom, because we’ve heard it all before from people wanting to sound intellectual.  ‘Made-up stories?’  Let’s have a think about that.  Where do most writers get their ideas?  The essence of good fiction (I’m talking literary and commercial here, not fantasy, etc) is its truth to life.  That’s how authors create believable characters readers care about, and conflicts and situations they can relate to.  Take the universal themes in the economic crisis alone – ambition, idealism, greed, downfall – and you have the inspiration for many great works from Macbeth to Of Mice and Men .  So I really don’t think we need to worry that readers (yes, even Guardian readers) will be abandoning fiction in droves in favour of books about the Eurozone crisis.

In my book group, Pigeon English provoked one of the strongest emotional responses of anything we have read, and not only because we are parents and live in London.  Stephen Kelman has done more than write a frighteningly realistic novel; he has written a book that matters and has the power to educate, to make people think.  It wouldn’t surprise me if the paperback is marketed as a crossover title. The author says he’d be happy if it gets a few more kids reading, but I hope Pigeon English makes it onto the secondary school curriculum where it can make the biggest impact.

And to anyone who’s given up on fiction because they believe it doesn’t reflect social reality, I recommend that you read Pigeon English .  It may just make you change your mind.

*POSTSCRIPT*

This week the Metropolitan Police launched a campaign aimed at teenagers from 13 to 15 warning of the consequences of carrying weapons.  The YouTube interactive film is called Choose A Different Ending.

http://http://youtu.be/JFVkzYDNJqo

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About Isabel Costello

15 thoughts on “ book review: pigeon english by stephen kelman ”.

Wow Guardian… way to harsh our buzz!

Not going to work though is it, Kelly?! As long as there are decent writers out there, there’ll be plenty of readers, I’m absolutely convinced of that.

An interesting review – this was the one book I fancied from the shortlist, but still wasn’t sure. Will definitely read it now. As for the Guardian piece, surely the greatest truths are shown through fiction?

Thanks, I will be very interested to hear what you make of it, Susan. I think books that are ‘of their time’ are quite rare and this is one of them. As for the role of fiction, although I’m not a fan of quotes, I do like the unattributed one that goes something like ‘anyone who thinks they only have one life to lead, doesn’t know how to read a book.’

Something else for the Christmas list . . .

Hi Jo, thanks for your comment. This blog is a dangerous place to hang out if you aren’t looking to add further to your ‘to read’ list, but I hope you come back later in the week to read my Hot Picks of 2012. They’re not out yet so at least you can pace yourself !

No time for fiction now – should we ditch novels in a time of crisis?

I am sure that everybody who reads Isabel’s blog immediately disagrees, but why? This reminds me of one of those nerdish mathematicians’ jokes: A lecture is taking place. The lecturer talks and writes strings of symbols on the blackboard. He proceeds and says: “and now it is obvious that ….” and writes the next string of symbols. He suddenly stops, stands back, scratches his head and asks aloud: “wait a minute, is it obvious?” he scratches his head a bit more, and then says, “excuse me, ladies and gentlemen” and leaves the lecture theatre. After 25 minutes he comes back in, and announces “yes, it is obvious” and continues the lecture from point where he had stopped and writes down the next string of symbols.

This is, I think, very much like the situation you are in if you are asked to explain why novels are important. Luckily, the job has been done already, and extremely well, in:

“Stop what you’re doing and read this!”, Vintage books 2011, £4.99.

A 180 page paperback of a sensible size at a sensible price. It contains 10 contributions mostly by established writers but also the odd academic, literacy worker ad publisher. Some pieces are autobiographical, others more discursive or analytical. Together these pieces present a very powerful case for fiction, why fiction really matters and why we need it if we want to live in a sane and healthy society.

I found this book completely by accident and I believe that this is the book which the education secretary should be distributing to every school, instead of his silly bibles idea.

Whilst I am at it, I also recommend “The Library Book”, Profile Books, 2012, £9.99. It contains 24 contributions in defence of public libraries and they cover especially the important role of libraries in promoting the reading of fiction. All royalties go to the reading Agency’s library programmes.

Thanks Tom for your contribution to this debate and for telling us about those two books, both of which I will now check out. Is there ANYTHING you don’t know about?! (I bet you used that maths example just to annoy me – it was good though…)

Finished Pigeon English today. It is beautiful. Never mind the minor flaws. As a foreigner in England, of 40 years standing I recognise the mild puzzlement about so many everyday things, which becomes a state of mind you just continue to live with. I feel at home in such fiction – it is set in the real England as you see it, in London at least. But now I am worried about Stephen Kelman: how on earth do you follow such a first novel? It can only be something entirely different. A tough challenge.

Thanks Tom I have recommended this book to countless people (maybe I belong in book PR!) and so far nobody has failed to be moved by it. You’re right, any flaws are minor indeed (and all books have them) but I’m not sure I share your anxiety about Stephen Kelman. I think anyone who can produce this is capable of pulling something else out of the bag. I was very interested in your Dutch perspective, especially after so many years.

Coming to this post very late but thanks for the link Isabel. I’ve just finished Pigeon English and I’m always interested in your reviews. I’m still not sure about it, I think I was expecting a lot more humour as anticipated by the back cover blurb and in the main I found it more sad than funny. I wasn’t entirely comfortable with the voice and constant use of phrases like, ‘asweh’ but I appreciate how hard it is to pull off a convincing child’s voice. I absolutely loved The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time and was expecting to feel the same about Pigeon English but it hasn’t had the same impact on me, But I’d definitely recommend it as worth a read as authentic insight into that world.

Thanks Helen, it’s always nice to get a comment on an old post! Looking at Pigeon English at a year’s remove, I still recall it very vividly and the ending knocked me sideways. Like you I found it far more sad than funny. I agree re the near impossibility of getting a child narrator right – I think there have been rather too many child-narrated novels lately and it’s not something I’m that keen on (although one did make my Hot Picks 2013!). I like writing teenagers but that’s completely different really. Isn’t it interesting how the pigeon survived the edit despite nobody I’ve ever come across thinking that worked? Except for the joke in the title, which wouldn’t have made any sense otherwise…

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Stephen Kelman, Pigeon English Paperback, 263 pages, Bloomsbury, 2011. ISBN-13: 978-1408810637. �12.99 Reviewed by Susie Thomas

There�s a lot of noise around about knife crime and violence among the nation�s children at the moment and, having grown up myself in a housing estate which is much like the one that features in the book, I wanted to show the positive aspects of these children�s lives and tell their stories in a way that I think hadn�t necessarily been told before.

All material published in The Literary London Journal (material within the directory www.literarylondon.org/london-journal/) is copyright © the identified author. If no author is identified in relation to content, that content is copyright � The Literary London Society , 2003-2012.

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Ios paperback review: Pigeon English, By Stephen Kelman

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Pigeon English is a reverse crossover novel – not a children's novel which turned out to be popular with adults with a taste for fantasy and nostalgia, but an adult novel which turned out to speak to kids too.

First published in 2011 and shortlisted for the Booker Prize, it's now been issued by Bloomsbury as a "Parental Advisory" novel for teenagers. They will find much to like. It's the first-person story of 11-year-old Harri Opoku, an immigrant from Ghana, living on a rough London council estate. It begins with the fatal stabbing of one of Harri's friends, and follows his attempts to solve the crime, aided by his mate Dean, along with his curious – and often comical – reflections on life, gangs, pigeons, sex, girls, trainers, England and the dodgy characters who live on his estate.

Kelman has captured that strange time when a child is on the cusp of puberty; both knowing and innocent, observant and naive. Harri's language is a rich stew of black London street slang, Standard English and Ghanaian expressions (while reading this I kept wanting to say "Advise yourself" to people I disagreed with).

The story was inspired by the death in November 2000 of Damilola Taylor, and, while it's a sad – indeed tragic – story (don't look for a happy ending here), it is full of life and energy, and is often very funny. It reminded me, by a curious coincidence, of another brilliant novel for adults about childhood by another author with the same surname: James Kelman's Kieron Smith, Boy .

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Pigeon English Paperback – 5 Jan. 2012

• Print length 288 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Bloomsbury Paperbacks
• Publication date 5 Jan. 2012
• Dimensions 12.9 x 1.75 x 19.8 cm
• ISBN-10 1408815680
• ISBN-13 978-1408815687
• See all details

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Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2011 Shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award 2011 Deeply funny, moving, idiosyncratic and unforgettable, Pigeon English introduces a major new literary talent

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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bloomsbury Paperbacks (5 Jan. 2012)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1408815680
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1408815687
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 12.9 x 1.75 x 19.8 cm
• 42,713 in Literary Fiction (Books)
• 48,497 in Contemporary Fiction (Books)

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Stephen kelman.

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Pigeon English : Book summary and reviews of Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman

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Pigeon English

by Stephen Kelman

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Published Jul 2011 288 pages Genre: Literary Fiction Publication Information

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About this book

Book summary.

Lying in front of Harrison Opuku is a body, the body of one of his classmates, a boy known for his crazy basketball skills, who seems to have been murdered for his dinner. Armed with a pair of camouflage binoculars and detective techniques absorbed from television shows like CSI, Harri and his best friend, Dean, plot to bring the perpetrator to justice. They gather evidence—fingerprints lifted from windows with tape, a wallet stained with blood—and lay traps to flush out the murderer. But nothing can prepare them for what happens when a criminal feels you closing in on him.

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Media Reviews

Reader reviews.

"Kelman's debut novel is a well-tuned if simplistic portrait of a kid's life in the housing projects of London." - Publishers Weekly "If your patrons liked Roddy Doyle's Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and if they rooted for Jamal Malik in Slumdog Millionaire, they will love Harri Opuku." - Library Journal "Even a kid as feisty and ingratiating as Harri can overstay his welcome. A pity, because brief snatches of his embryonic wit, street smarts and survival instincts are about as hutious as it gets." - Kirkus "[C]harm and peril are on full display in Stephen Kelman's first novel…[a] mixture of ridiculous observations and accidental insights makes Pigeon English continually surprising and endearing…Whether [Harrison's] explaining the rules of farting or the tragedy of gang killings, there's a sweetness here that's irresistible." - The Washington Post, Ron Charles " Pigeon English is a book to fall in love with: a funny book, a true book, a shattering book ... If you loved Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time or Emma Donoghue’s Man Booker–shortlisted Room , you’ll love this book too." - The Times (UK) "Fantastic ... it seems hard to believe this is the author’s first book." - Guardian (UK)

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Author Information

Stephen kelman.

Stephen Kelman grew up in the housing projects of Luton, England. He has worked as a careworker, a warehouse operative, in marketing, and in local government administration. Pigeon English was shortlisted for the Desmond Elliot Prize and was named a "best first novel of 2011" by Waterstones bookstores in his native England; it will be published in twenty countries.

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Pigeon English

Written by Stephen Kelman

Stephen Kelman’s spellbinding portrayal of a boy balancing on the edge of manhood, and the forces around him that try to shape the way he falls.

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Official blog of Editors Toronto

Book review: Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman

By Whitney Matusiak

Set in a rough London estate, Pigeon English is a modern-day coming-of-age tale with dark leanings centring on the gang-related death of a young boy. With childlike but remarkably poignant humour and honesty, Ghanaian-born Harri investigates the murder with his best friend Dean. With hints of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and Miriam Toews’ The Flying Troutmans , readers are engaged in thought-provoking social questions, and Harri’s boundless curiosity and sympathy give way to a tale that is as beautiful as it is heartbreaking.

The success of Pigeon English is undoubtedly a result of Kelman’s extraordinarily imaginative and realistic characters. Kelman takes a literary risk, using a lot of informal language, and the title of the novel evokes this language play. Kelman brilliantly uses interjections of West African Pidgin English, or Guinea Coast Creole English, to breathe life into Harri and the supporting characters.

Also known as “coastal jargon,” this form of Pidgin English arose in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries during British-dominated slave trade along the Atlantic coasts. Kelman’s use of Pidgin English allows readers to hear characters admire and admonish in a language that has been historically cultivated and colloquially blended by the people of the Americas, Europe, and West Africa. Here are some of the expressions that appear in the book:

“adjei”: an expression of mild consternation, irritation, lament

“bogah”: a slang term for a gangster

“dey touch”: mad, insane, mentally ill

“gowayou”: the contraction of “go away you”

“idey”: nearly

“rarse”: a multi-purpose term of emphasis to express amusement, surprise

The Pidgin English is not the only deviation from “proper” English in Kelman’s novel. Combine it with London lingo, and you’re happy to have the glossary at the back of the book to help you out. There are other examples of slang and informal (sometimes insensitive) uses of language that, in context, help accurately describe Harri’s community, family, and school from the point of view of an 11-year-old, underprivileged Ghanaian immigrant. And just like any child who feels the emotional extremes of happiness, sadness, and surprise, Harri uses a small but powerful arsenal of words that make recurring, if not catch-phrase-like, appearances, such as:

“bo-styles”: cool

“manky”: gross

“hutious”: scary, frightening

Kelman and his editing and publishing team could have opted for linguistic and grammatical propriety, but at what cost? The grammatical slips and trips add vibrancy and culture that would have been otherwise hard to convey without being insincere or obvious. It’s Kelman’s selective and strategic use of Pidgin English and other flagrant uses of language that give an authentic flavour to his characters and their development, without overwhelming the reader. Pigeon English teaches writers and editors alike the importance of sensitive editing for the purposes of story and character development. The beauty behind the oddball turns of phrase is the genuine voice behind every sentence, and the knowledge that it’s building more than a character; it’s also building a community and a history.

Kelman’s story of a young boy’s curiosity and compassion transcends not only its genre, but also the “rules” of grammar and language, whatever those are.

Whitney Matusiak is a freelance writer and editor for  Jean Marie Creatively , providing copywriting, substantive editing, and copy editing services for corporate, academic, trade, and lifestyle publications.

This article was copy edited by Jeny Nussey.

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Before we get started, yes – I do know that is not how you spell Pidgin and no – the title does not need to be changed. By Pigeon English I am referring to the literary novel by Stephen Kelman. I doubt you would have heard of it but if you have congratulations; if you haven’t don’t worry about it. This book came to my attention when I found out it was one of the novels I am studying for my GCSE’s and my friend mentioned to me that it was a tribute to Damilola Taylor. That instantly caught my attention.

Pigeon English is a riveting book following the life of a first-generation immigration by the name of Harrison Opoku who recently relocated from Ghana to Peckham with his mum and older sister Lydia. He is curious, good-natured, and innocent, although at times finds it difficult to maintain this innocence in the face of pervasive peer pressure, crime, and violence that he encounters steadily throughout the whole novel.

‘The flowers on the coffin said Son and Forever. But it felt like Forever was already finished. It felt like somebody took it away when they killed the dead boy. It’s not supposed to happen.’

The novel is thick with character development and enough plot twists to leave your head in a spin, but the steady development of the story allows you to connect deeply with the protagonist and empathise with the growing pains he faces. All throughout the book a cyclical narrative of violence is explored but through the viewpoint of an eleven-year-old not only incites comedy but also allows the reader to experience a different mindset to harrowing experiences.

Pigeon English features many diverse characters all with their own stories to tell however most notably is Harri, the protagonist who is known for overlooking prejudice but most importantly his love of pigeons. There is also Lydia. The sister of Harri and a teenager who is struggling to adapt to a new country but still remember her roots at the same time.

The book is a must read which highlights the issues that some people face on a day to day basis whilst shedding light on a child’s inner world during these experiences!

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• Stephen Kelman

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Pigeon English Kindle Edition

Man Booker Prize Finalist: A “winning and ingenious” novel about an eleven-year-old immigrant boy trying to solve a murder ( The Plain Dealer ).   Lying in front of Harrison Opoku is a body. It is the body of one of his classmates, a boy known for his incredible basketball skills, who seems to have been murdered for his dinner.   Armed with a pair of camouflage binoculars and techniques absorbed from television shows like CSI , Harri and his best friend, Dean, plot to bring the perpetrator to justice. They gather evidence—fingerprints lifted with tape, a wallet stained with blood—and lay traps to flush out the killer. But nothing can prepare them for what happens when a criminal feels you closing in.   Recently emigrated from Ghana with his sister and mother to South London’s enormous housing projects, Harri is obsessed with gummy candy, friendly to the pigeon who visits his balcony, is quite possibly the fastest runner in his school, and is clearly also fast on the trail of a murderer. “[A] work of deep sympathy and imagination,” Pigeon English is a tale of friendship and adventure, as Harri finds wonder, mystery, and danger in his new, ever-expanding world ( The Boston Globe ).   “ Pigeon English is a book to fall in love with: a funny book, a true book, a shattering book. . . . If you loved Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time or Emma Donoghue’s Man Booker–shortlisted Room , you’ll love this book too.” — The Times (London)   “Convincingly evokes life on the edge . . . The humour, the resilience, the sheer ebullience of its narrator—a hero for our times—should ensure the book becomes, deservedly, a classic.” — The Mail on Sunday   “Continually surprising and endearing . . . There’s a sweetness here that’s irresistible.” — The  Washington Post   “Funny and poignant . . . What might be described as Diary of a Wimpy Kid meets Trainspotting .” — Toronto Star   “Since Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, there have been certain rules observed when children play detective. Stephen Kelman throws them all out . . . The mystery is secondary to the pleasures of listening to Harri.” — The Christian Science Monitor

• Print length 289 pages
• Language English
• Sticky notes On Kindle Scribe
• Publisher Mariner Books
• Publication date July 19, 2011
• File size 2280 KB
• Page Flip Enabled
• Word Wise Enabled
• Enhanced typesetting Enabled
• See all details

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Editorial Reviews

"Ingenious . . . Pigeon English packs a wallop." -- Cleveland Plain Dealer

From the Inside Flap

From the back cover.

"Intelligent, observant." "The New Yorker" "If your patrons liked Roddy Doyle s "Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha" and if they rooted for Jamal Malik in "Slumdog Millionaire," they will love Harri Opuku." "Library Journal," starred review "In turns funny and tragic . . . Its message is universal." "Huffington Post" Advise yourself! Jump into "Pigeon English" and experience the jubilant, infectious voice of Harrison Opuku a boy awed by the city, obsessed with gummy candy, a friend to everyone he meets. See why he is "bo-styles." How being the fastest runner in Year 7 makes him "dope-fine." And how crazy things get when Harri and his best friend launch their own investigation into the murder of a classmate and one of the Dell Farm Crew s "hutious "criminals feels them closing in on him. You ll want this book to last "donkey hours," and you ll see why Harri is truly a hero for our times. * "Like "Room ." . . and "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time" . . . "Pigeon English" is a novel for adults told in the remarkable voice of a child. In this fine company, Kelman's novel stands out." "Milwaukee Journal Sentinel" "Since Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, there have been certain rules observed when children play detective. Stephen Kelman throws them all out." "Christian Science Monitor" Stephen Kelman grew up in the housing projects of Luton, England. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, "Pigeon English "has been published in twenty countries; it is his first novel. *" Mail on Sunday" (UK) Look for the Reader s Guide at www.marinerreadersguides.com "

About the Author

Excerpt. © reprinted by permission. all rights reserved..

You could see the blood. It was darker than you thought. It was all on the ground outside Chicken Joe’s. It just felt crazy.  Jordan: ‘I’ll give you a million quid if you touch it.’  Me: ‘You don’t have a million.’  Jordan: ‘One quid then.’  You wanted to touch it but you couldn’t get close enough. There was a line in the way:

POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS

 If you cross the line you’ll turn to dust.  We weren’t allowed to talk to the policeman, he had to concentrate for if the killer came back. I could see the chains hanging from his belt but I couldn’t see the gun.  The dead boy’s mamma was guarding the blood. She wanted it to stay, you could tell. The rain wanted to come and wash the blood away but she wouldn’t let it. She wasn’t even crying, she was just stiff and fierce like it was her job to scare the rain back up into the sky. A pigeon was looking for his chop. He walked right in the blood. He was even sad as well, you could tell where his eyes were all pink and dead. * * *

The flowers were already bent. There were pictures of the dead boy wearing his school uniform. His jumper was green.  My jumper’s blue. My uniform’s better. The only bad thing about it is the tie, it’s too scratchy. I hate it when they’re scratchy like that.  There were bottles of beer instead of candles and the dead boy’s friends wrote messages to him. They all said he was a great friend. Some of the spelling was wrong but I didn’t mind. His football boots were on the railings tied up by their laces. They were nearly new Nikes, the studs were proper metal and everything.  Jordan: ‘Shall I t’ief them? He don’t need ’em no more.’  I just pretended I didn’t hear him. Jordan would never really steal them, they were a million times too big. They looked too empty just hanging there. I wanted to wear them but they’d never fit.

Me and the dead boy were only half friends, I didn’t see him very much because he was older and he didn’t go to my school. He could ride his bike with no hands and you never even wanted him to fall off. I said a prayer for him inside my head. It just said sorry. That’s all I could remember. I pretended like if I kept looking hard enough I could make the blood move and go back in the shape of a boy. I could bring him back alive that way. It happened before, where I used to live there was a chief who brought his son back like that. It was a long time ago, before I was born. Asweh, it was a miracle. It didn’t work this time.  I gave him my bouncy ball. I don’t need it anymore, I’ve got M ve more under my bed. Jordan only gave him a pebble he found on the floor.  Me: ‘That doesn’t count. It has to be something that belonged to you.’  Jordan: ‘I ain’t got nothing. I didn’t know we had to bring a present.’  I gave Jordan a strawberry Chewit to give to the dead boy, then I showed him how to make a cross. Both the two of us made a cross. We were very quiet. It even felt important. We ran all the way home. I beat Jordan easily. I can beat everybody, I’m the fastest in Year 7. I just wanted to get away before the dying caught us.

The buildings are all mighty around here. My tower is as high as the lighthouse at Jamestown. There are three towers all in a row: Luxembourg House, Stockholm House and Copenhagen House. I live in Copenhagen House. My flat is on floor 9 out of 14. It’s not even hutious, I can look from the window now and my belly doesn’t even turn over. I love going in the lift, it’s brutal, especially when you’re the only one in there. Then you could be a spirit or a spy. You even forget the pissy smell because you’re going so fast.  It’s proper windy at the bottom like a whirlpool. If you stand at the bottom where the tower meets the ground and put your arms out, you can pretend like you’re a bird. You can feel the wind try to pick you up, it’s nearly like flying.  Me: ‘Hold your arms out wider!’  Jordan: ‘They’re as wide as I can get ’em! This is so gay, I’m not doing it no more!’  Me: ‘It’s not gay, it’s brilliant!’  Asweh, it’s the best way to feel alive. You only don’t want the wind to pick you up, because you don’t know where it will drop you. It might drop you in the bushes or the sea.

In England there’s a hell of different words for everything. It’s for if you forget one, there’s always another one left over. It’s very helpful. Gay and dumb and lame mean all the same. Piss and slash and tinkle mean all the same (the same as greet the chief). There’s a million words for a bulla. When I came to my new school, do you know what’s the first thing Connor Green said to me?  Connor Green: ‘Have you got happiness?’  Me: ‘Yes.’  Connor Green: ‘Are you sure you’ve got happiness?’  Me: ‘Yes.’  Connor Green: ‘But are you really sure?’  Me: ‘I think so.’  He kept asking me if I had happiness. He wouldn’t stop. In the end it just vexed me. Then I wasn’t sure. Connor Green was laughing, I didn’t even know why. Then Manik told me it was a trick.  Manik: ‘He’s not asking if you’ve got happiness, he’s asking if you’ve got a penis. He says it to everyone. It’s just a trick.’  It only sounds like happiness but really it means a penis.  Ha-penis.  Connor Green: ‘Got ya! Hook, line and sinker!’  Connor Green is always making tricks. He’s just a confusionist. That’s the first thing you learn about him. At least I didn’t lose. I do have a penis. The trick doesn’t work if it’s true.

Some people use their balconies for hanging washing or growing plants. I only use mine for watching the helicopters. It’s a bit dizzy. You can’t stay out there for more than one minute or you’ll turn into an icicle. I saw X-Fire painting his name on the wall of Stockholm House. He didn’t know I could see him. He was proper quick and the words still came out dope-fine. I want to write my own name that big but the paint in a can is too dangerous, if you get it on yourself it never washes off, even forever.  The baby trees are in a cage. They put a cage around the tree to stop you stealing it. Asweh, it’s very crazy. Who’d steal a tree anyway? Who’d chook a boy just to get his Chicken Joe’s?

Product details

• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B004X7QMPI
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Mariner Books; Reprint edition (July 19, 2011)
• Publication date ‏ : ‎ July 19, 2011
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• File size ‏ : ‎ 2280 KB
• Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
• Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
• Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 289 pages
• #2,942 in Cultural Heritage Fiction
• #3,141 in Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Literary Fiction
• #3,766 in Coming of Age Fiction (Kindle Store)

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Stephen kelman.

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