Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman
There’s been a bit of fuss over this book. I love distinct voices and the Ghanian-Brit argot of a pre-teen sounded like something more to love. Game on.
There are few books I start and do not finish. I feel an almost moral obligation to not leave a book to languish. But I almost put this book down. Little man’s voice was getting tedious and maybe I was too daft to recognize the voice of the pigeon until well after fifty pages in, but I was struggling. Just before I conceded defeat I flipped a few dozen pages ahead to see if something would happen to make me care enough to hang on. I’m glad I did because the reward included passages like this,
It’s like the Boss always says: they’re just meat loosely wrapped around a blazing star. We don’t mourn the wrapping once it’s discarded, we celebrate the freeing of the star….You keep going out of spite or with magnificent defiance, you keep going through steely instinct or by cotton-wool consensus, you keep going because you’re made that way.
This post is dedicated to R. Harvey whose star is free now. Shine on.
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