Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2011, I know I am late to the party with this novel. But sometimes a book grabs you by the collar and holds you close until it’s done with you. “Pigeon English” by Stephen Kelman was one of those books. I read it on a recent business trip to Belgium and almost missed my train stop on my journey out to deepest Flanders because I was so engrossed. 

The debut novel from writer Stephen Kelman is the story of eleven year old Harrison Opoku, newly arrived from his home in Ghana to a brave new world in a South London housing estate. Harri is in London with his older sister, Lydia and his mother, leaving his father, grandmother and baby sister Agnes behind in their homeland until the family can afford to be together. Thrown into the confusing and menacing world of the Dell Farm Estate, Harri witnesses the aftermath of a stabbing and the subsequent death of a young man and embarks on his own murder investigation.

Harri is the narrator of his own story and Kelman captures brilliantly, the mixture of wonder and misunderstanding that is a young boy navigating a new world. His concerns are simple; how fast can he run in his charity shop trainers, how he can get closer to the fair Poppy Morgan and whether there will be proper goal posts in heaven. Harri’s innocence is under constant assault from the world around him; from his sister’s sexually aggressive friends and the ever present dark cloud of the Dell Farm Crew, a gang of violent hoodies who are in turn appealing and dangerous for Harri. 

Harri is good, sweet, kind and funny. And as well as maintaining Harri’s distinctive and convincing narrative, Kelman also manages to expertly draw his characters. His friend, Jordan, is a young boy bristling with promised violence and anger. Lydia is a girl on he cusp of womanhood, looking for a way to fit in and protect herself and her family. Even the thuggish characters from the Dell Farm Crew appear as confused young men struggling to assert themselves and gain respect from their peers, making some tragic and horrific mistakes on the way. 

As well as describing Harri’s own Ghanaian and London slang-peppered speech, the title also refers to the odd addition of a pigeon who visits Harri’s high rise flat. Kelman gives voice to the bird who acts as a kind of guardian angel for Harri and a second narrative voice, giving us at times foreboding musings on the nature of human existence. It’s an interesting idea, and certainly anyone who lives in London will recognise the pigeon as the city’s constant companion but it’s clumsily slotted into the novel and makes for the only weak point. 

I read the book, not knowing that it was inspired by the tragedy that befell Damilola Taylor, an eleven year old Nigerian boy who bled to death in a Peckham stairwell in 2000, having been stabbed by two twelve year old boys, but, as a reader you cannot ignore the parallels.  The novel is tender, endearing and at times funny, but also horrific, raising social questions about poverty, drugs, violence and the frustrations of a youth trapped by these things. A brilliant, important and haunting book.