Pigeon English

Loved this.

Harri has recently emigrated to London from Ghana with one of his two sisters and his mom; the father and sibling are coming later. He's eleven and discovering the ins and outs of urban gangs, middle school crushes, sport. It's a pretty rich ground in which to plant a good mystery.

Harri and friend Dean are not what you'd call typical detectives, of course, being guided by popular television, but the unsolved stabbing of a neighborhood boy nags at their sense of justice. As does the hope of reward.

But the larger mystery is this transplanted boy trying to figure out life. It has emotional heft and a great drive.

This is the third book to make me cry in 2011. Getting soft.

Good so far. Harrison is a recent immigrant from West Africa who is going to school in London. He has no race issues - his friends at school are from all sorts of places (sometimes even England...). The rest of society has other ideas; and that's before you get the gangs who control parts of the school and the housing estates, and the pigeon with which young Harrison strikes up an unlikely rapport.
It's a portrayal of a sometimes grim world of the outer suburbs, but is also very funny and the indomitable Harri and his friends are a memorable creation.
Critical reaction to this - which is after all a book about a black boy by a white man - has much used the phrase 'middle class' which can only be used disparagingly, though some of the reactions involve the 'horror' of Harri's world, probably from those in whose lives there is no danger - I can't imagine that in fact, isn't everywhere dangerous, even ostensibly safe areas, can't any shadow hide sudden violence? For example, Braintree? What's that all about, then? One night it really kicked off and in the morning when the police and the locals came to have a look at the damage, they found a brain. In a tree. So the town was thereafter known as Braintree.

Harrison is a recent immigrant from West Africa who is going to school in London. He has no race issues - his friends at school are from all sorts of places (sometimes even England...). The rest of society has other ideas; and that's before you get the gangs who control parts of the school and the housing estates, and the pigeon with which young Harrison strikes up an unlikely rapport. It's a portrayal of a sometimes grim world of the outer suburbs, but is also very funny and the indomitable Harri and his friends are a memorable creation. Critical reaction to this - which is after all a book about a black boy by a white man - has much used the phrase 'middle class' which can only be used disparagingly, though some of the reactions involve the 'horror' of Harri's world, probably from those in whose lives there is no danger - I can't imagine that in fact, isn't everywhere dangerous, even ostensibly safe areas, can't any shadow hide sudden violence? For example, Braintree? What's that all about, then? One night it really kicked off and in the morning when the police and the locals came to have a look at the damage, they found a brain. In a tree. So the town was thereafter known as Braintree.