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Overview
"If your patrons liked Roddy Doyle’s Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha and if they rooted for Jamal Malik in Slumdog Millionaire, they will love Harri Opoku." —Library Journal, starred review
"In turns funny and tragic . . . Its message is universal." –Huffington Post
Advise yourself! Jump into Pigeon English and experience the jubilant, infectious voice of Harrison Opoku—a boy awed by the city, obsessed with gummy candy, a friend to everyone he meets. See why he is bo-styles. How being the fastest runner in Year 7 makes him dope-fine. And how crazy things get when Harri and his best friend launch their own investigation into the murder of a classmate and one of the Dell Farm Crew’s hutious criminals feels them closing in on him. You’ll want this book to last donkey hours, and you’ll see why Harri is truly a “hero for our times.”*
"Like Room . . . and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time . . . Pigeon English is a novel for adults told in the remarkable voice of a child. In this fine company, Kelman's novel stands out." —Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
"Since Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, there have been certain rules observed when children play detective. Stephen Kelman throws them all out." —Christian Science Monitor
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781474251020 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Bloomsbury Publishing |
| Publication date: | 10/22/2015 |
| Series: | Plays for Young People |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 96 |
| File size: | 252 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
MARCH
You could see the blood. It was darker than you thought.
It was all on the ground outside Chicken Joe’s. It just felt
crazy.
Jordan: ‘I’ll give you a million quid if you touch it.’
Me: ‘You don’t have a million.’
Jordan: ‘One quid then.’
You wanted to touch it but you couldn’t get close
enough. There was a line in the way:
POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS
If you cross the line you’ll turn to dust.
We weren’t allowed to talk to the policeman, he had
to concentrate for if the killer came back. I could see
the chains hanging from his belt but I couldn’t see the
gun.
The dead boy’s mamma was guarding the blood. She
wanted it to stay, you could tell. The rain wanted to come
and wash the blood away but she wouldn’t let it. She
wasn’t even crying, she was just stiff and fierce like it was
her job to scare the rain back up into the sky. A pigeon was
looking for his chop. He walked right in the blood. He was
even sad as well, you could tell where his eyes were all pink
and dead.
* * *
The flowers were already bent. There were pictures of the
dead boy wearing his school uniform. His jumper was
green.
My jumper’s blue. My uniform’s better. The only bad
thing about it is the tie, it’s too scratchy. I hate it when
they’re scratchy like that.
There were bottles of beer instead of candles and the
dead boy’s friends wrote messages to him. They all said he
was a great friend. Some of the spelling was wrong but I
didn’t mind. His football boots were on the railings tied up
by their laces. They were nearly new Nikes, the studs were
proper metal and everything.
Jordan: ‘Shall I t’ief them? He don’t need ’em no more.’
I just pretended I didn’t hear him. Jordan would never
really steal them, they were a million times too big. They
looked too empty just hanging there. I wanted to wear
them but they’d never fit.
Me and the dead boy were only half friends, I didn’t see
him very much because he was older and he didn’t go
to my school. He could ride his bike with no hands and
you never even wanted him to fall off. I said a prayer
for him inside my head. It just said sorry. That’s all I
could remember. I pretended like if I kept looking hard
enough I could make the blood move and go back in the
shape of a boy. I could bring him back alive that way. It
happened before, where I used to live there was a chief
who brought his son back like that. It was a long time
ago, before I was born. Asweh, it was a miracle. It didn’t
work this time.
I gave him my bouncy ball. I don’t need it anymore, I’ve
got M ve more under my bed. Jordan only gave him a pebble
he found on the floor.
Me: ‘That doesn’t count. It has to be something that
belonged to you.’
Jordan: ‘I ain’t got nothing. I didn’t know we had to
bring a present.’
I gave Jordan a strawberry Chewit to give to the dead
boy, then I showed him how to make a cross. Both the two
of us made a cross. We were very quiet. It even felt important.
We ran all the way home. I beat Jordan easily. I can
beat everybody, I’m the fastest in Year 7. I just wanted to
get away before the dying caught us.
The buildings are all mighty around here. My tower is
as high as the lighthouse at Jamestown. There are three
towers all in a row: Luxembourg House, Stockholm House
and Copenhagen House. I live in Copenhagen House. My
flat is on floor 9 out of 14. It’s not even hutious, I can look
from the window now and my belly doesn’t even turn over.
I love going in the lift, it’s brutal, especially when you’re
the only one in there. Then you could be a spirit or a spy.
You even forget the pissy smell because you’re going so
fast.
It’s proper windy at the bottom like a whirlpool. If you
stand at the bottom where the tower meets the ground and
put your arms out, you can pretend like you’re a bird. You
can feel the wind try to pick you up, it’s nearly like flying.
Me: ‘Hold your arms out wider!’
Jordan: ‘They’re as wide as I can get ’em! This is so gay,
I’m not doing it no more!’
Me: ‘It’s not gay, it’s brilliant!’
Asweh, it’s the best way to feel alive. You only don’t
want the wind to pick you up, because you don’t know
where it will drop you. It might drop you in the bushes or
the sea.
In England there’s a hell of different words for everything.
It’s for if you forget one, there’s always another one left
over. It’s very helpful. Gay and dumb and lame mean all
the same. Piss and slash and tinkle mean all the same (the
same as greet the chief). There’s a million words for a bulla.
When I came to my new school, do you know what’s the
first thing Connor Green said to me?
Connor Green: ‘Have you got happiness?’
Me: ‘Yes.’
Connor Green: ‘Are you sure you’ve got happiness?’
Me: ‘Yes.’
Connor Green: ‘But are you really sure?’
Me: ‘I think so.’
He kept asking me if I had happiness. He wouldn’t stop.
In the end it just vexed me. Then I wasn’t sure. Connor
Green was laughing, I didn’t even know why. Then Manik
told me it was a trick.
Manik: ‘He’s not asking if you’ve got happiness, he’s
asking if you’ve got a penis. He says it to everyone. It’s just
a trick.’
It only sounds like happiness but really it means a penis.
Ha-penis.
Connor Green: ‘Got ya! Hook, line and sinker!’
Connor Green is always making tricks. He’s just a confusionist.
That’s the first thing you learn about him. At least
I didn’t lose. I do have a penis. The trick doesn’t work if
it’s true.
Some people use their balconies for hanging washing
or growing plants. I only use mine for watching the
helicopters. It’s a bit dizzy. You can’t stay out there for
more than one minute or you’ll turn into an icicle. I
saw X-Fire painting his name on the wall of Stockholm
House. He didn’t know I could see him. He was proper
quick and the words still came out dope-fine. I want to
write my own name that big but the paint in a can is too
dangerous, if you get it on yourself it never washes off,
even forever.
The baby trees are in a cage. They put a cage around the
tree to stop you stealing it. Asweh, it’s very crazy. Who’d
steal a tree anyway? Who’d chook a boy just to get his
Chicken Joe’s?
Interviews
What inspired you to write Pigeon English?
Pigeon English is my response to the epidemic of child-on-child violence, specifically knife crime, which affects many poor, urban areas of Britain, particularly in inner-city London. Every week another teenager is stabbed to death, and this only encourages the view of Britain's children as feral and beyond hope, their lives bleak and blighted by violence. I wanted to address the subjects of child-on-child violence, immigration, and social breakdown in a more intimate way than is depicted in the news media; not to sermonize or romanticize but to present the lives of these characters as they are. I also wanted to show how the diversity of influences and experiences that come as a result of multiculturalism can only enrich us all.
I grew up in a housing project much like the one in the book; my experience of that was as much positive as negative, and I wanted Pigeon English to reflect that. The kids in the book are in one sense victims — of deprivation or crime or a lack of opportunities — but they don't view themselves as victims. They're full of life, vibrant and funny and resilient. In writing from a child's perspective I was able explore my themes without exploiting them. They could form the backdrop for what is at heart a universal story, a coming-of-age tale for modern times. Everyone remembers being eleven — the age of Harri, my narrator — learning the rules of the playground, making friends and enemies, exploring the boundaries of adulthood. Harri doesn't analyze the forces at play in his world, he just gets on with the business of living, and he does this with an exuberance that defies the darkness of the world around him. The book has been described as his love letter to the world, and that's the one thing I want readers to take away from it — it's not a lament of frustrated lives as much as a celebration of life itself.
Why the title?
Pigeon English is a play on the term "pidgin English," pidgin being a simplified hybrid language that develops between groups of people who don't share a common tongue, and that allows them to communicate with each other. In our increasingly globalized world, where economic migration is so widespread and people from different cultural, racial, and religious backgrounds are either obliged to or are choosing to work and live together, it is more important than ever that we find a means to communicate, a glue to bind those diverse elements into an integrated whole. That glue is our shared humanity, and just as Harri is a symbol of that — a recent immigrant from Africa to London who embraces his new home with wide-eyed wonder — so too is the pigeon that visits his balcony. Pigeons are found in every corner of the globe. Wherever people are, they seem to follow; they coexist with us either as pests or as the benign background to our everyday lives, depending on your point of view. The pigeon in the book poses the question: how do we differ and how are we alike? The bearded stranger you pass on the street, the woman who answers your tech support call in an unfamiliar accent: are these people in any way an obstacle to your way of life, or are they simply fellow travelers sharing a common path, a path trod by all of us?
Pigeon English portrays the lives of children from an underprivileged section of society. How do you think a child's environment influences his or her experiences, and to what extent does it shape his or her journey to adulthood?
The children in the book all live in the same inner-city housing project, and so they experience the same problems and deprivations. It is a place of few opportunities, where a lack of investment has left an indelible impact not only on the physical environment but on its inhabitants' sense of self-worth and aspiration. Violence and petty crime are prevalent, and drug abuse and alcoholism are visible, present dangers. Positive adult role models are few and far between. When all a child can see are the traps in his or her way, the path to escape becomes that much harder to negotiate. This feeling of being trapped often plays itself out in negative ways: a child's decision to join a gang, for example, is not only born of a need to feel protected in numbers from the perils of the street but also of a desire for kinship and belonging in the face of common frustrations for which they hold the adult world responsible. But these kinships, these bonds forged in adversity, can also be a positive thing. I've spoken of how resilient and vibrant the children in the book are — almost spitefully so, as if they're collectively giving the finger to the adult world, defying it to take away their spirit if it dares — and this resilience is the springboard from which some of these kids, if given the encouragement and provided the opportunity through education, might just leap clear of their difficult beginnings.
In Harri's young world, violence is pervasive. Was this your experience as a child?
I grew up in an environment much like Harri's, amid many of the same problems. Crime, poverty, and violence were and still are commonplace. But for a kid these things felt more abstract than they do for an adult — they were simply part of the background hum of life and didn't seem to possess the power to impinge on the day-to-day business of being a child. When I was Harri's age I used to choose my route home from school based on how I could best avoid the class bully; but that bully wasn't carrying a knife, and the worst I had to fear should I run into him was a punch in the nose. At that time — I was eleven years old in 1987 — Britain did not have such an entrenched gang problem, and whatever threat of violence there was lacked that extreme edge. There wasn't the sense, as there is now, that every encounter with those dark forces would have life-changing or lethal consequences; violence was still something that could be avoided if you were careful and stuck to the rules. And growing up, I didn't have access to the violent entertainment that today's children are exposed to. There was no Internet and no cell phones with video playback, and my TV viewing was restricted. Now, with the availability of violent content through every media channel, it seems as though that inevitable desensitization has occurred, and society appears to be reaping the seeds it has sown.
Who have you discovered lately?
I've recently discovered Patrick Lane, a Canadian poet whose memoir What The Stones Remember [A Discover selection in 2005—Ed.] is an unflinchingly humane account of his recovery from alcoholism. His novel Red Dog, Red Dog is equally incisive and beautifully written, a portrait of a doomed working class family in 1950s British Columbia. I think he's a modern day Steinbeck. My wife has also recently introduced me to Philip Roth, whom I'd never read before. I loved American Pastoral and will read more.