A Hell of Different Words

I think of myself as a very traditional reader of fiction. I don't like experimental stuff, I just want a good story.

That said, I must admit that my love of many novels is based more on the use of language than on the plots. Take "Motherless Brooklyn" by Jonathan Lethem, for example. This novel is a detective story in which the private investigator suffers from Tourette's syndrome.

"Motherless Brooklyn" doesn't really work as a mystery story. There's action and suspense, the usual climactic scene followed by a tying up of loose ends, but that's not what keeps the pages turning.

The main character and narrator does that. I don't suffer from Tourette's syndrome and, presumably, neither does Jonathan Lethem, but his character's narration sounds authentic and is absolutely compelling. This is not achieved through description, though — it is found in the voice of the novel.

I was thinking about this recently while reading "Pigeon English" by British author Stephen Kelman. This is his first novel, and it has won awards in his home country. Set in the Tottenham district of London, recently in the news, it is the story of Harrison Opuku, an 11-year-old immigrant from Ghana.



Harri is in London with his mother and his sister, Lydia. His father, grandmother and baby sister, Agnes, are still in Ghana. His mother works long hours trying to help raise the money necessary to reunite the family. The separation is a hard one, relieved only by weekly phone calls that end mid-sentence when the calling card minutes run out.

Nevertheless, Harri is a pretty happy kid, fascinated by his new environment. He "adopts" the pigeon that appears frequently on the balcony of their apartment in a London tower block. Annoying older sister Lydia is always fun, and being the fastest runner in Year 7 is often helpful and at times life-saving.

Things change when a classmate is murdered, apparently for the take-out dinner he was carrying. The police seem to have no leads and little interest, so Harri and his best friend, informed by "CSI" reruns, set out to find the culprit.

Harri has already encountered the mean streets of his housing development; he knows that what they are doing is dangerous and that murder is not a game.

Kelman makes good use of his youthful narrator. Harri is predictably goofy, putting magic marker stripes on his off-brand sneakers to make them look like bo-styles Nikes, falling head over heels in love with a girl named Poppy and engaging in the ridiculous dares beloved by boys of that age everywhere.

This makes an effective juxtaposition with the reality of life in the housing projects, where immigrants, legal and illegal, struggle to make a new life in the midst of poverty, crime and violence that intrudes even into the lives of children.

This debut novel is based on true events. Kelman's plotting has some weaknesses. There is a story, but it might be better described as a walk through the projects with an irresistible guide. The joy of this book is in its telling. Harri speaks a rollicking mixture of English and Ghanian slang well-seasoned by his own inventiveness and a child's joie de vivre.

After a classroom embarrassment, he complains that "In England there's a hell of different words for everything," but he clearly loves all those words, the music of slang, the fun and the power of language.

Be careful. You may find yourself reading out loud. As Harri would say, "Asweh, that would be hutious! Everybody knows it."

Photo (Tower of Babel) by buridan (Jeremy Hunsinger) -- Creative Commons