February - Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman

Newly arrived from Ghana with his mother and older sister, 11 year old Harrison Opoku lives on the 9th 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 for the pigeon who visits his balcony, Harri absorbs the many strange elements of life in England; watching, listening, and learning the tricks of urban survival.

Our first book for 2012 raised little in the way of enthusiasm for this debut novel. There were numerous comments of its disjointed narrative and lack of character empathy which kept our club scores down, ranging from 3 to 8 points.

Joan mentioned the paradox of Harri and his family moving from the violence of Ghana to the toxic world of gang warfare in a south London estate. She also found an all too real glimpse of immigrants coming to a new country for a fresh start only to be alienated and separated from loved ones.

Viti picked up on a subtle atmosphere of menace that lay beneath the whole story and also pointed to the Lord of the Flies analogy of loss of rules and breakdown of family and social structures. Well done Viti!

Everyone took Harri’s pigeon to be the carrier of his thoughts and emotions. A small but meaningful balance to Harri’s new world of Adidas trainers and gangland murder.

By far the most condemning aspect of Pigeon English would have to be its failure to connect our readers with the main characters and their plight. As a whole, our group prefers to connect with and care about those within the pages, so no matter how clever, innovative or profound a work of literature is, if we cannot relate or feel compassion, our enjoyment level drops and so does our recommendation.

As always, we would be interested in your opinion. If you’ve read Pigeon English, make a comment and let us know what you think.