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Loading... Pigeon Englishby Stephen Kelman
  
No current Talk conversations about this book.  cspiwak | Mar 6, 2024 |   If you are precious about appropriation of language and "stereotypes" then give it a miss. This isn't for you and to be frank I'd prefer people not pull it down with current ideologies of what is and isn't "okay" (this was written 13 years ago, things change and we evolve). (  ) MichaelH85 | Jan 23, 2024 | This book reminded me a lot of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, with the motif of the little boy investigating a crime. I've seen people compare it to Paddy Clark Ha Ha Ha as well, and Harri's naive observations of life do remind me of that book. Kelman based this book on an actual case, although that's only referred to tangentially in the acknowledgements at the end. Another very good book; I'd probably have this as second to Hilary Mantell so far. (  ) gjky | Apr 9, 2023 | ) reader1009 | Jul 3, 2021 |  ) Ma_Washigeri | Jan 23, 2021 |
 Pigeon English is indeed a very impressive debut...Pigeon English has a fresh, undeniable appeal, but Kelman doesn’t entirely knock it out of the park. Plotting gets swept aside for long stretches in order to focus on the coming-of-age aspect of the novel, and Harri’s charm-assault eventually begins to flag. Italicized monologues from a kind of “spirit pigeon”— Harri’s favourite bird — feel contrived. Kelman clearly has the instinct and the skills for future greatness. If this book doesn’t make him The Next Big Thing, there’s a good chance his next one will. Pigeon English 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.  It is bad form to be rude about first novels, and a pleasure to praise them. Stephen Kelman’s has a powerful story, a pacy plot and engaging characters. It paints a vivid portrait with honesty, sympathy and wit, of a much neglected milieu, and it addresses urgent social questions. Stephen Kelman's debut is sympathetic if overhyped portrait of the frightened boys behind Peckham's gangs....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.....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... Belongs to Publisher SeriesA tot vent (631)
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.Recently emigrated from Ghana with his sister and mother to London?s enormous housing projects, Harri is pure curiosity and ebullience-obsessed with gummy candy, a friend to the pigeon who visits his balcony, quite possibly the fastest runner in his school, and clearly also fast on the trail of a murderer.Told in Harri's infectious voice and multicultural slang, Pigeon English follows in the tradition of our great novels of friendship and adventure, as Harri finds wonder, mystery, and danger in his new, ever-expanding world. No library descriptions found. 
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 Google Books — Loading...GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.92Literature English English fiction Modern Period 2000-LC ClassificationRatingAverage: (3.46)
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Wikipedia in English (1)
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Spoiler alert.....
this story does not end well. I recently read swamplandia and Mr. Pip. It seems that somehow if you rape or murder a child in your book, that will raise it in the eyes of the world to art.Count me out
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