Pigeon English – Stephen Kelman

Eleven year old Harrison Opoku, recent arrival from Ghana, lives in London with his mother and older sister, while his father, grandma and baby sister remain in Africa awaiting their opportunity to join them. From his high-rise flat Harrison tries to make sense of his new unfamiliar surroundings, sometimes in conversation with a persistent pigeon that visits his balcony.

At school he has his own mixed group of friends but there is also the pull of the cool but dangerous Dell Farm Crew; and there is Poppy Morgan who exerts an altogether different and novel attraction.

When a boy is stabbed to death outside the off-licence, Harrison and his best friend Dean decide to investigate using CSI techniques gleaned from Dean’s favourite TV show. Their unsubtle efforts, though not remotely in danger of detecting anything, could draw some unwelcome attention from those with something to hide.

Kelman captures the wonder of a young boy for whom life’s possibilities, good and bad, are just opening up. The clarity with which he sees events contrasts amusingly with his naivety in interpreting some of the unfolding facts of life. Can he learn quickly enough to survive?

Although written from a young boy’s perspective, the novel has adult themes and a dark edge of reality. As for the pigeon, I’m not sure I got its symbolism, but its interventions were minimal and didn’t detract from my enjoyment.

The End of the Shelf

No individual review this week but a retrospective on the completion of the “Along the Library Shelf” reading journey.

It took about four years to move alphabetically through the local library stock, choosing a book from an author new to me. It has been a worthwhile exercise and I have read and enjoyed books that otherwise I would probably not have considered, with only two or three where I wished I had chosen better.

The objective of increasing variety, getting out of any reading rut, has been achieved. My partiality for male authors was less pronounced with a 15:11 ratio (compared with 75:6 for the three years 2008 to 2010); and though a majority of books were set in the UK (15) and USA (5), there were six located around the world (Argentina, Iceland, Japan, China, Mongolia and Greece) with others making excursions to Hawaii, Malaysia, Nigeria, Arabia and France.

In terms of genre, the main fare was 20^th and 21^st century fiction (10) and crime/thrillers (5) but historic fiction, humour, ghost/horror, short stories and biography were all represented. Two gaps were science fiction (surprisingly as I used to read a lot) and westerns (less surprisingly as I’ve only ever read one, two if you count The Sisters Brothers).

Two of the ‘new to me’ authors (Chris Cleave and David Mitchell) impressed me sufficiently to read further works; and I would happily read more by at least ten of the others.

So overall it was a successful and enjoyable journey that I will consider doing all over again.

The Bull of Mithros – Anne Zouroudi

Read as part Z of the “Along the Library Shelf” reading journey.

Chosen because

As to be expected the choice in the Z section was small, but this novel seemed inoffensive enough – a Poirot-esque detective, an idyllic Greek island setting, and not too thick.

The Review

Mithros is an obscure little Greek island with its only claim to fame being the small ebony bull with gold horns, recently discovered and more recently lost, with now only a replica available for the tourists to see.

Around the time of the disappearance a violent robbery and a tragic death occurred, and seventeen years later the victim of the theft and the friends of the deceased remain on Mithros, now men of standing and influence within the tight knit community.

Then two newcomers arrive. One is pitched off a boat and has to swim ashore with nothing but his shorts; he wants to leave but lacks the means, even ID, to do so. The other man has both a name – Hermes Diaktoros – and transport – a smart yacht with a small crew to minister to his sophisticated needs; but once he sniffs out a mystery he is in no hurry to leave, preferring to investigate.

Despite his lack of credentials, he uses his charm and urbanity to wheedle information out of the residents and his sleuthing powers to work out the connections between current events, the tragedy of seventeen years previous, and the disappearance of the ancient Bull of Mithros.

The island characters are fleshed out nicely, but Diaktoros remains an enigma, moving unhurriedly in the Mediterranean heat to his conclusion. Similarly the book’s pace is slow but engaging, and would make for a good holiday read for those with time to kill in a resort such as Mithros.

Read another?

There are another six ‘mysteries of the Greek detective’ out there somewhere, but I’ll not be looking out for them.

An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth – Chris Hadfield

On 20 July 1969, like countless other nine-year-old boys, Chris Hadfield watched on TV as Neil Armstrong descended to the surface of the moon, and decided he wanted to be an astronaut. Unlike most, the desire continued well beyond the school summer holidays.

He studied hard, joined the Air Cadets, took a degree in mechanical engineering at military college, trained to fly fighter planes and became a test pilot. All with an eye on his ultimate goal, made even more unlikely by his Canadian nationality. However in 1991 the Canadian Space Authority put out an advert, “Wanted: astronauts”, just two actually, but Hadfield applied along with 5,329 other hopefuls.

He made it, and went on to make three space flights: two on the space shuttle for short stays first at the Russian MIR space station (1995) and at the incipient International Space Station (ISS) in 2001; and then in 2012 a final trip to spend five months in command of the ISS from where he boosted the profile of the mission with his Space Oddity video that went viral on the internet.

As well as giving a first-hand account of space travel, Hadfield spreads a little homespun wisdom – applying lessons learnt in the unforgiving environment of space to life on Earth. Much is counter-intuitive: how to be a zero (not a hero); the power of negative thinking (what is the next thing that can kill you); and valuing the small personal wins as just much as the big public achievements.

Such humility comes through the writing. It is no breast-beating self-promo, more a homage to teamwork and mutual support, quite eye-opening in revealing what an astronaut does for the long months and years when not in space. The chronology jumps around a bit in the middle section as the different flights are used to illustrate his themes, but his final trip to the ISS pulls the narrative back together to conclude an interesting read.