Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman

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.

The first thing that you need to know if you are intending to read this book is that it is properly hutious. Don't know what that means? I will get to it shortly.

Harrison Opuku has recently immigrated to the UK from Ghana, along with his mother and two sisters, Lydia and Agnes. His father and other relatives have remained in Ghana with hopes of joining them soon. The family lives in one of the tower blocks that form part of the London suburban landscape. The area is rough with violence, gangs and danger forming part of the everyday landscape.

The book opens when Harrison and his friends are standing around looking at the body of one of his acquaintances. The boy appears to have been killed for his dinner. With the gang culture that is prevalent the Police seem powerless to come up with a breakthrough in the investigation to find out why the boy died, and who killed him. When it seems apparent to Harrison that there will be no answers, he decides to try to investigate the murder, along with his friend Dean.

Harrison is an interesting character, alternatively innocent and hard edged, awed by the life that he is now living in London, but also reminiscing about is life back in Ghana, worried about his sisters and mother especially seeing as he is now the man of the house, yet needling his older sister Lydia constantly, on the verge of sexual activity and yet happy to just hold hands with his girlfriend Poppy.

Sometimes the juxtaposition between the two levels of extreme was startling, but I have no doubt that that was a deliberate choice by the author. For example, early in the book in one paragraph Harrison is telling us about the playground where sometimes the kids swap football stickers and sweets, and a short five or so paragraphs later, he is being shown the correct way to 'chook' (knife) someone by some of the members of the Dell Farm Crew. A few more paragraphs and Harrison is talking about his love for all the different types of Haribo lollies.

Many of the people that Harrison comes in contact with are the marginalised in society - elderly, disabled, immigrant, drunken - and yet he does find some fragile sense of community with these people. In a way he has been searching for belonging anywhere he could find it, even if that means becoming part of the Dell Farm Crew. The alternative to belonging to DFC though is to be enemies to them, and that is a dangerous place to find yourself.

As Harrison and his friend Dean continue to investigate the murder they find themselves coming up against the code of silence which dominates the gangs, and by asking the wrong questions, or being in the wrong place at the wrong time, they bring attention to themselves in ways that may have consequences far greater than anyone can imagine.

There is one other 'character" in the book whose presence grows as the story progresses and that is a pigeon.. As I was reading the book I was puzzled by the choice that the author made, but looking back on it from a distance of a couple of weeks I suspect that the use of this additional perspective was to provide a foreshadowing point of view, but also to reiterate the childishness of Harrison as the book speeds to it's conclusion.

When the author talked about the tower block that Harrison lived in, I was taken back to the time when I lived in one of those towers. We lived in one in Sheffield for a couple of years until I had my son and we were moved out because the Council didn't allow young children to live in the higher levels of the tower. I was lucky to live on a very quiet floor of the tower. There was an old lady who had lived in her flat for nearly 30 years who lived opposite us, and the flat next to us was quite often empty. I do remember getting out of the lift on the wrong floor and being terrified because just one floor below us there was graffiti and broken windows on the landing.You had to be careful.

There were times when I completely related to the Harrison and his family constantly checking to ensure that the door was locked, and to try not to look out the peephole when you heard unexpected noise. I learnt that the hard way when I was at home by myself one night and the police broke the door in next door at 2am and suddenly I had them knocking on my door too. The author did a great job of reminding me of living in that environment of constant awareness of what was happening around you. It wasn't always fear, but I guess I was constantly aware that something could happen, even if it didn't.

At the very beginning I mentioned that this book was hutious, which is as far as I can tell is a Ghanaian slang term for "frightening". Not only are the events portrayed hutious to our main characters, but as a reader you are taken into a world where just being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or not being accepted by a particular group of people, can lead to danger every days. Sometimes that danger is slight, but other times, it is much greater.


There is charm in the language, there is a relatively good portrayal of events from the perspective of a young boy, but please don't expect this to be a light and fluffy read, for it is something completely different altogether from that.  Weeks after finishing this novel though, I found myself contemplating the events portrayed in the book in far more than a 'I really liked that book' kind of way. It is a rare book that does that to me. The strange thing about that for me is that this is despite the fact that I didn't totally connect with the world or the characters, even though I did have my experiences to draw upon.


Thanks to Netgalley for the e-ARC of this novel.

Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones

'You cannot pretend to read a book. Your eyes will give you away. So will your breathing. A person entranced by a book simply forgets to breathe. The house can catch alight and a reader deep in a book will not look up until the wallpaper is in flames.'


After the trouble starts and the soldiers arrive on Matilda's tropical island, only one white person stays behind. Mr Watts wears a red nose and pulls his wife around on a trolley. The kids call him Pop Eye. But there is no one else to teach them their lessons. Mr Watts begins to read aloud to the class from his battered copy of Great Expectations, a book by his friend Mr Dickens.

Soon Dickens' hero Pip starts to come alive for Matilda. She writes his name in the sand and decorates it with shells. Pip becomes as real to her as her own mother, and the greatest friendship of her life has begun.

But Matilda is not the only one who believes in Pip. And, on an island at war, the power of the imagination can be a dangerously provocative thing.

Matilda is a young girl who lives on a tropical island with her mother. Her father has gone to Australia for work. Whilst the intention was that he would be sending for them in due course, they have not heard from him for a long time, and any hope of leaving is quickly doused when life on the island is interrupted by a guerrilla war between the native islanders and the 'redskins'. The year is 1991, and the island is Bougainville in Papua New Guinea, and I can remember when war broke out on that island. Unfortunately, what I remember is very much tainted by the news as we heard it here in Australia, so it is more about the evacuation of the many Australian workers who were employed in the lucrative mines and not so much about the effect of the warfare on the native population. This lack of coverage or assistance for the native population is covered in the novel as the characters talk about waiting for the outside world to assist them, not realising that there was an embargo placed on the island. When I was writing this post, I looked up some information on Bougainville and was surprised to find that the conflict is still ongoing into the early parts of this decade, although on a much reduced scale. There was still enough instability that the mines on the island were still closed, thus depriving many of the islanders of their main source of income.

With the outbreak of war, many of the things that are taken for granted like electricity and refrigeration are lost, and the islanders have to revert to a more simpler way of life, one much more like the way their ancestors would have lived. Another thing that changes for the village children is that their teacher leaves the island on the last boat (a phrase that for Matilda shows how helpless the islanders really are now).

Into the gap left by the departed teacher steps Mr Watts. He is a white man who has remained on the island despite the war. He is called Pop Eye by the children on the island, and before becoming the children's teacher was treated with derision because he often used to wear a clown's red nose and pull his wife around on a trolley. But when he comes to the classroom he opens up a whole new world to many of the children, most especially to Matilda.

Because he is not a qualified teacher, he doesn't know what to teach the children so he starts by introducing them to his friend Mr Dickens, by reading them the book Great Expectations, and so a group of children on a tropical island find themselves transported to Victorian England. He also invites the villagers to come in and share important facts with the children often with very humourous results.

This book is incredibly layered. It is about the power of reading, the destruction that is wrought on individuals and groups of people during war, the sacrifices that people make to save those that they love. It also shows how the discovery of a single story can change the direction of an individuals life, and how passion for a particular subject can lead you places you could never have imagined as a young child.

This book was shortlisted for the 2007 Booker Prize, and won the Commonwealth Writer's Prize in the same year. At 220 pages, this book isn't long, but it is a moving and powerful novel.

Coincidentally this is the second book that I have read in a month that features Dicken's Great Expectations. The first was Jack Maggs by Peter Carey, which I never realised was a retelling of the Dicken's classic because I have never actually read the original story. Maybe the fact that I have read two books in such a short period that reference it is a message to tell me to read the original story!

Other blogger's thoughts:

An Adventure in Reading
Subliminal Intervention

If you have reviewed this book, leave a comment and I will link to your review.

On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan

A short novel of quite remarkable depth, power and poignancy by a writer at the height of his powers.

It is July 1962. Edward and Florence, young innocents married that morning, arrive at a hotel on the Dorset coast. At dinner in their rooms they struggle to suppress their private fears of the wedding night to come....

On Chesil Beach is another masterwork from Ian McEwan - a story of lives transformed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.

I'm going to give you fair warning - there is going to be a lot of intro to explain what I am doing with this review. I actually wasn't intending to write this review just yet - there are numerous other books that I was going to do first, but then last night I made a small discovery that I thought I might share.

First, a bit of an introduction. The First Tuesday Book Club is a book review show that is shown on the ABC (our public broadcaster - think the BBC without the funding) on the first Tuesday of each month. The regular reviewers are Marieke Hardy (grand daughter of a famous Australian author and actress, screenwriter and blogger in her own right), Jason Steger (book editor of The Age and The Sunday Age) and Jennifer Byrne (journalist and presenter), and they are joined each month by two guest reviewers. The two guest reviewers in this clip were Robyn Butler who is a comedian who just did a comedy series called The Librarians for the ABC, and Geoffrey Robertson (business man as far as I can tell).

My small discovery was that you can view all the reviews online, and that there is one there for On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan. So by clicking on the link below you will be taken to the First Tuesday Book Club site, and will be able to watch just under 10 minutes of discussion (warning - lots of spoilers!)


On Chesil Beach discussion


So which of the reviewers did I agree with?

Well, I didn't weep buckets, but I didn't hate it to the point that I would take the risk alienate my spouse (if I had one), so I guess that I am with Jason. There were definitely some good parts of the book, but it did have problems! The set up of the story was excellent, and the ending was moving in a 'my goodness how did these people just let life pass them by' kind of way. The biggest problem for me is that the lack of communication between two people who are seemingly so in love just didn't work for me.


Other Blogger's Thoughts:

So Many Precious Books, So Little Time
Caribou's Mom
The Bluestocking Society
1 More Chapter
An Adventure in Reading
Thoughts of Joy
Leafing Through Life

The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid

At a cafe table in Lahore, a Pakistani man begins the tale that has led to his fateful meeting with an uneasy American stranger. As dusk deepens to night, he begins the tale that has brought them to this fateful meeting....

Changez is living an immigrant's dream of America. Top of his class at Princeton, he is snapped up by Underwood Samson, an elite firm that specializes in the 'valuation' of companies ripe for acquisition. He thrives on the energy of New York and the intensity of his work, and his infatuation with the elegant, beautiful America promises entry into the Manhattan society at the same exalted level once occupied by his own family back home in Lahore.

For a time, it seems as though nothing will stand in the way of Changez's meteoric rise to personal and professional success. But in the wake of September 11, he finds his position in his adopted city suddenly overturned, and his budding relationship with Erica eclipsed by the reawakened ghosts of her past. And Changez's own identity is in seismic shift as well, unearthing allegiances more fundamental than money, power and maybe even love.

With echoes of Camus and Fitzgerald, The Reluctant Fundamentalist is a riveting, devastating exploration of our divided yet ultimately indivisible world.

I can not tell you how surprised I am at how much I really loved this book especially given the way that the story itself is told.

The main character Changez offers assistance to an unnamed American tourist one afternoon. After shepherding the tourist to a small cafe, so begins a long afternoon/evening where Changez tells his tale. The interactions with the other characters are only show as they are reflected through Changez's own speech. At no time do we hear from the tourist, or the waiter or any of the other characters of whom we generally only see fleeting glimpses.

The story that Changez tells is one of searching for identity and belonging and love. Changez had spent many years in America studying at Princeton, getting top grades and eventually recruited to one of the most sought after jobs following graduation. Everything is going well for Changez. Not only does he have the job of his dreams, earning loads of cash, travelling first class, but he is also falling in love with the beautiful Erica who introduces him to the creme de la creme of New York society.

Then comes 9/11, and while at first there is little change for Changez gradually he begins to look at the implications of the political decisions that are made, and wonder about his own identity in relation to these events. He also begins to understand that Erica's seemingly confident grace is a barely there shell over a fragmented and tortured psyche.

As he tells the stranger his story and they share a meal and drinks, we get to see small glimpses of clues about what kind of man it is that Changez is dining with and what he might be doing in Lahore, but a lot of the information we are given is implied rather than presented to the reader on a platter.

The fact that all 180 pages of this book are portraying this one meeting, and that there is so little interaction and clarity around the other characters would normally be something that would drive me nuts, but in this authors capable hands, there was no question of impatience on my part. I was prepared to let the details unfurl at precisely the speed that the author was ready to reveal them and to savour the skill involved in telling such a strong story from such a limited perspective.

Quite often books that are nominated for prizes can be a bit inaccessible and can feel like something of a labour to get through, but not this one! Every now and again there is a gem that is profound and yet completely readable, and this is one such case.

Totally loved it!

Other Blogger's Thoughts:

Bold. Blue. Adventure

The Complete Booker

Hot on the heels of The Pulitzer Project comes The Complete Booker. Of the books on this prize winning list I have read only three, although I have been meaning to read several others for ages!


2006 - The Inheritance of Loss (Desai)
2005 - The Sea (Banville)
2004 - The Line of Beauty (Hollinghurst) - Didn't really like this one.
2003 - Vernon God Little (Pierre)
2002 - Life of Pi (Martel)
2001 - True History of the Kelly Gang (Carey)
2000 - The Blind Assassin (Atwood)
1999 - Disgrace (Coetzee)
1998 - Amsterdam: A Novel (McEwan)
1997 - The God of Small Things (Roy)
1996 - Last Orders (Swift)
1995 - The Ghost Road (Barker)
1994 - How Late It Was, How Late (Kelman)
1993 - Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (Doyle)
1992 - The English Patient (Ondaatje)
1992 - Sacred Hunger (Unsworth)
1991 - The Famished Road (Okri)
1990 - Possession: A Romance (Byatt)
1989 - The Remains of the Day (Ishiguro)
1988 - Oscar and Lucinda (Carey)
1987 - Moon Tiger (Lively)
1986 - The Old Devils (Amis)
1985 - The Bone People (Hulme)
1984 - Hotel Du Lac (Brookner)
1983 - Life & Times of Michael K (Coetzee)
1982 - Schindler's List (Keneally)
1981 - Midnight's Children (Rushdie)
1980 - Rites of Passage (Golding)
1979 - Offshore (Fitzgerald)
1978 - The Sea, the Sea (Murdoch)
1977 - Staying on (Scott)
1976 - Saville (Storey)
1975 - Heat and Dust (Jhabvala)
1974 - The Conservationist (Gordimer)
1973 - The Siege of Krishnapur (Farrell)
1972 - G. (Berger)
1971 - In a Free State (Naipaul)
1970 - The Elected Member (Rubens)
1969 - Something to Answer For (Newby)





Another reason for posting this today is that I am going to join in on Dewey's Man Booker Challenge where the challenge is to read six of the books listed above between January 1 and December 31 2008.

Of the books listed above, the books that I am going to read for this challenge are:

Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
Ghost Road by Pat Barker
Amsterdam: A Novel by Ian McEwan
The Famished Road by Ben Okri


The only concern I have about that list is that Ghost Road is the third book in the series, so just in case I decide not to go with that one my substitute may be Possession by AS Byatt.


And that, I think, will be it for challenges for a little while. I did seriously contemplate joining the Royalty Rules challenge to the extent that I had my book list almost ready and the post almost done, but in the end I was going to have to be adding books to my TBR list to complete it, and one of the things that I said about joining in on challenges is that they had to be bringing the number of books on my TBR list down...not up!