LoveReading Says
LoveReading Says
April 2012 Guest Editor Paul Torday on Pigeon English...
I loved this novel of an innocent Ghanaian child who comes with his mother to England and then gets caught up in the gang life of a suburban wilderness somewhere in south London. What I most admire about the book is the way the author gets across the voice of the child narrator. The tension between the young boy’s innocence and the gang language he learns to speak without really understanding the awful bleakness of gang culture, make this a very moving and convincing read.
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2011.
Shortlisted for the Galaxy New Writer of the Year Award 2011.
Shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize 2011.
Shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award 2011.
A story of innocence and experience, hope and harsh reality, Pigeon English is a spellbinding portrayal of a boy balancing on the edge of manhood and of the forces around him that try to shape the way he falls. It's also deeply funny, moving, idiosyncratic and unforgettable and introduces a major new literary talent.
Sarah Broadhurst
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Pigeon English Synopsis
Newly arrived from Ghana with his mother and older sister, eleven-year-old Harrison Opoku lives on the ninth floor of a block of flats on an inner-city housing estate. The second best runner in the whole of Year 7, Harri races through his new life in his personalised trainers - the Adidas stripes drawn on with marker pen - blissfully unaware of the very real threat all around him. With equal fascination for the local gang - the Dell Farm Crew - and the pigeon who visits his balcony, Harri absorbs the many strange elements of his new life in England: watching, listening, and learning the tricks of urban survival. But when a boy is knifed to death on the high street and a police appeal for witnesses draws only silence, Harri decides to start a murder investigation of his own. In doing so, he unwittingly endangers the fragile web his mother has spun around her family to try and keep them safe.
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Press Reviews
Stephen Kelman Press Reviews
'Simultaneously accurate and fantastical, this boy's love letter to the world made me laugh and tremble all the way through. Pigeon English is a triumph'
Emma Donoghue, author of Room
'A powerful and impressive novel ... Kelman knows the world of boys - their language, their humour, their thoughts - and Harri's voice is dazzlingly authentic. Utterly convincing and deeply moving, this is a book that we should all read'
Clare Morrall, author of The Man Who Disappeared
'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'
Erica Wagner, The Times
'One of the hardest things in fiction is to write from a child's point of view - Kelman does it brilliantly'
Alex Clark, Guardian
Author
About Stephen Kelman
Stephen Kelman was born in Luton in 1976. After finishing his degree he worked variously as a warehouse operative, a careworker, and in marketing and local government administration. He decided to pursue his writing seriously in 2005, and has completed several feature screenplays since then. Pigeon English is his first novel.
Author photo © Jonathan Ring
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