Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman

Title: Pigeon English

Author: Stephen Kelman

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Release Date: 5th January 2012

Genre: Crime, Young Adult

Summary:

Harrison Opoku has recently immigrated to the busy, diverse and dangerous London suburbs from Ghana with his mother and sister Lydia. Everything is different to Harri; from the Haribo in the shops to the toilets in his mother's flat. 

If making friends was not hard enough for this new outsider; a local gang starts to terrorise the neighbourhood and his friends. One day, however, one of his friends is found dead on the street. Harri soon decides to take action and investigate. 

But when he is confronted by this new world full of guns, crime, girls and gangs will Harri be able to stay true to himself, and his mother, or will his innocence be corrupted by this dangerous, new culture?

Review:When I first started my university course, they made us all read this book over the summer so we would all have something to talk about in our tutor groups (I know, very bizarre!). Our group discussions then accumulated into a question and answer session with the author himself, Stephen Kelman. Whilst the majority of students did not actually read it; I did and really wish I had listened to my friends and not even bothered!

There were several quite a lot of things that annoyed me about the book.

The story itself is pretty simple and predictable. Whilst it tries to tackle current gun and crime culture in inner cities and the implications it can have on innocent children; I felt that it paints a rather stereotypical picture of the sort of people that live these areas and the conditions they live in. In my opinion, it does not in any way try to challenge these stereotypes and broaden readers expectations. Just another inner-city crime story then...

The pigeon. I had no idea what was with the pigeon. Whilst I understand that the books title Pigeon English is word play on the Ghanaian-English dialect "Pidgin English"; I did not like the pigeon narrative. I found it unnessecary, weird and a distraction from the main plot. Upon talking to Kelman, it was revealed that the pigeon was meant to be a guardian over Harrison. I am sorry, but how can a pigeon protect someone? HOW?!

Harrison. No eleven-year-old acts like that. Sorry.

The writing style. Apparently it is now okay to totally get rid of correct speech attribution; just be lazy and just use the script format!

The ending. There is nothing I hate more than an unfinished story which ends on an action or event which is inevitable. When I read a book I like an ending which provides closure for all the characters. It does not necessarily need to be happy; I feel it just needs to conclude in a way that each character is fulfilled and gets their just deserts. Instead this book just ends and the plot seems almost unfinished...

Rating: 3/10. That is me being generous...

You can buy Pigeon English from Amazon here.