Tuesday 16 August 2011

Booker Longlist: Pigeon English

Reading Pigeon English on the kindle is a wholly different experience from reading a paper copy. There are none of the nuanced clues that come from packaging. The book comes through to you, direct, unimpeded by endpapers, blurbs, author biogs...and what I'm loving most is the tenderly emergent relationship between the narrator and the feral pigeon. It was such a welcome surprise, such an elegant and witty idea.

Once again we are in the hands of a teenage narrator, this time a would-be sleuth. And once again it is impossible not to draw comparisons with other debut novels, most notably Catherine O'Flynn's novel What was Lost. There are times when this narrator's voice seems just slightly laboured, when the pigeon English, grates and slips from absolute credibility. But on the whole (and the large part of the book remains to be read) I'm enjoying this novel.

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