Pigeon English

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I'm sure Mr. Kelman has created some loveable characters but sadly, I could feel no sympathy towards any of them. Yes, even Harri. Sea creatures fascinate Harri, and he peppers his narrative with zoological facts. This particular fact about sharks is symbolic. Young boys in Harri's neighborhood have to be like sharks, constantly moving and vigilant; otherwise, gangs can harm or even kill them. By using the image of a shark constantly swimming, the text invites the reader to imagine how stressful life in London is for Harry and his peers, and how such hypervigilance can push children to join gangs. Julius is Auntie Sonia's violent and abusive partner. He is known for his baseball bat, called "the Persuader," which he uses to beat people who are late repaying their debts. Julius sexually harrassed Auntie Sonia in front of her family and beats her. Poppy Morgan In May, there is a carnival in Harri’s neighborhood. On Sunday, church is cancelled because someone smashed the windows and wrote DFC all over the wall. Harri argues with Lydia about the clothes she bleached. Harri insists he saw blood on them, but Lydia tells him that it was Miquita’s blood—“girl’s blood.” He and his friends come upon a crime scene where an older teen boy is stabbed to death and the remainder of the book very loosely and sloppily becomes a bit of a comedic drama about his thinking processes, amateur sleuthing and his world views. This young boy is a fast runner, full of mischief, sweet, imaginative and very funny. This story is somewhat interesting but often repetitive and too loosey goosey.

Eleven-year-old Harrison Opoku, the second best runner in Year 7, races through his new life in England with his personalised trainers - the Adidas stripes drawn on with marker pen - blissfully unaware of the very real threat around him. Newly-arrived from Ghana with his mother and older sister Lydia, Harri absorbs the many strange elements of city life, from the bewildering array of Haribo sweets, to the frightening, fascinating gang of older boys from his school. But his life is changed forever when one of his friends is murdered. As the victim's nearly new football boots hang in tribute on railings behind fluorescent tape and a police appeal draws only silence, Harri decides to act, unwittingly endangering the fragile web his mother has spun around her family to keep them safe.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. Eleven-year-old Harrison Opoku, the second best runner in Year 7, races through his new life in England with his personalised trainers - the Adidas stripes drawn on with marker pen - blissfully unaware of the very real threat around him.

In this quotation, Harri misunderstands why his mother fixates on news stories about child death. Since Mamma enjoys church and advises her children to pray, Harri assumes that any time his mother prays, it is a positive experience. In reality, Harri's mother prays fervently because she knows her children will always be in danger, though she does her best to protect them. This quotation exemplifies Harri's innocence: he is frequently unable to recognize when he is in danger and thus misses chances to ask his family for help. Someone has scratched the word DEAD onto Harri’s family’s front door. Later, the Dell Farm Crew approach Harri and Dean and try to rob them. Harri is carrying the wallet with the dead boy’s picture inside, and when the Dell Farm Crew grabs the wallet, the picture drops to the floor. Killa is visibly upset, and X-Fire burns the picture with a lighter. Just as X-Fire reaches for his knife and is about to pounce on Dean and Harri, Lydia shouts, and the three of them escape to the library together. Lydia explains that she filmed the whole scene, including X-Fire burning the picture. Agnes has a fever, and Harri worries that she is going to die. When her fever goes away, Mamma and Lydia both cry with happiness. Auntie Sonia and her abusive boyfriend Julius buy presents for Lydia and Harri. As a birthday surprise for his sister, Harri takes Lydia to some wet cement, where they both leave footprints and write their names. While Dean and Harri are playing football, Dean finds a wallet, inside of which is a photo of the dead boy smiling with a white girl. The boys discover that the photo has blood on it.The book is filled with energy-explosively light and dark by turns as Harrison struggles his way through the school year mixing childhood play with adult struggles that he cannot begin to really understand.

To sum up, it's really an interesting book and a tear-jerker strangely, for one so politically relevant. But a warning - it might annoy some American readers with a lot of unfamiliar words and different accents. These words are also unfamiliar to a lot of British people not living in that area but there are so many accents and dialects in the UK - English is a less homogenous language than in the US maybe - that it doesn't really annoy anyone. The book is especially recommended to those who haven't forgotten the way the police and judiciary treated the murder of Damilola Taylor, whom this book is obviously about, may the little boy RIP. Personally, while I tend to prefer plot-driven fiction, I can live with minimal or no plot if there is something to connect with. And in this book, 11-year-old Harrison (aka "Harri") Opoku is such a lovable, naive, child that I couldn't help but connect with his irrepressible spirit. Like Harri, moved from Africa to an alien first-world country at around age 10-11, and found it to be a similarly bewildering and hostile place. Others may find Harri to be too precious or unbelievably innocent, but I fell for him hook, line, and sinker. And to be fair, the book is not entirely plotless, there is a murder mystery to propel things, along with a minor romantic subplot.

Pigeon English is the debut novel by English author Stephen Kelman. It is told from the point of view of Harrison Opoku, an eleven-year-old Ghanaian immigrant living on a tough London estate. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2011. Mamma likes it best when it’s a child who died. That’s when she prays the hardest. She prays proper hard and squeezes you until you think you’re going to burst. Grown-ups love sad news, it gives them something special to pray for. Harri, April Chanelle and Miquita get into a fight at school one day. Right as Miquita is about to push Chanelle through the window, teachers come over and break up the fight. Harri notices that Killa displays several “signs of guilt,” and Harri begins to believe that Killa murdered the dead boy with Miquita. Harri and Dean grab Killa’s hands and take his fingerprints with sellotape.