My last shortlisted book was Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman. The novel begins with a pool of blood, a child has been knifed to death – 'chooked', as the narrator, Harrison says, using the local slang. The estate where Harrison lives is clearly a rough, inner-city one, but seen through Harrison's eyes it takes on an unexpected appearance. Originally from Ghana, 12-year-old Harrison is at the same time street-wise and self-assured, and naive and ingenuous. Harri and the dead boy were 'half-friends'. 'I didn't see him very much', he explains, '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.'
Maybe it's because I live in London, but I found the place and characters Kelman has created utterly believable, from the way that they speak to the things that they see and do. I loved the way Harrison navigates his way through this world, and that things which to an adult seem awful or scary to Harrison are just part of life, and often to be enjoyed or celebrated. There's a running, dreamlike element of a relationship Harrison forms with a pigeon he encounters on the estate – I wasn't quite sure about this, it was the one element of the novel I didn't think quite worked. But there's a thread of mysticism and spirituality seeping across from Harrison's homeland into which the idea of the pigeon as a kind of spirit totem fits nicely. I love the way Harrison tries to make sense of the world around him – as here, where he notes the protective cages around the trees – '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?'
Sometimes the best books are ones that take you into a world so completely you feel like you experience it from the inside. As I was reading Pigeon English I kept thinking 'is this true? It sounds true, but how could the author know all this?'. When I finished the book there was a Q&A with Steven Kelman and I found out that he had grown up on a council estate in Luton and, I imagine, many of the characters and scenes in this novel are ones that are drawn from his life experiences. I think the delight for me was that Harrison's world was so convincing, and it's a thought-provoking and provocative novel. Seen from the perspective of a child, the reader can see how the forces of poverty, poor education, lack of job prospects, powerful immigration laws, and a constantly shifting community has its effect on shaping what kind of person the child grows up to be. Fortunately for Harrison there is an innate sweetness to his nature and a strong enough sense of self that he is able to resist the more malign influences of his environment. In very broad terms the novel could be seen as a battle between good and evil for Harrison's soul. Very sadly, however, Kelman's conclusion shows that – as for Damilola Taylor eleven years ago – the odds are stacked against the innocence of childhood surviving on a sink-estate.
