Pigeon English

Continuing my Booker Short List Quest I read Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman which was excellent. It's a first time novel written in the voice of an 11 year old boy from Ghana living in the projects of London with his mother and sister. His father and younger sister are still saving the money to come to England. The boy Harrison and his friend Dean decide to solve a mystery of a murdered boy who Harrison knew vaguely. His voice is so true: exuberant, breathless and open like only an 11 year old can be. I fell in love. 

There is a slightly annoying sort of omniscient narrator voice in italics but I decided to skip those bits. So this was a new handy rule to be filed away with other rules: I don't read dream sequences, I don't read books written in dialect, I won't read anything described as lyrical and now I don't read passages in italics purporting to be the voice of a pigeon. But this is minor quibble in an otherwise heartrending and fantastic book.

And the Booker goes to.......Pigeon English!