Across the literary pages | 7 March 2011

It was, in case you didn’t notice, World Book Night on Saturday. BBC2’s evening of bookish programmes can be found here, together with posts by Matthew Richardson and Emily Rhodes. Besides those, here is a selection of pieces from the weekend’s literary pages.

Stephen Kelman’s Pigeon English is a highly acclaimed first novel, and Kelman is being tipped for further accolades: both Erica Wagner (£) and John Mullan have expressed their admiration. Lewis Jones reviews Kelman’s idiosyncratic and shocking book for the Telegraph.

‘It is bad form to be rude about first novels, and a pleasure to praise them. Stephen Kelman’s has a powerful story, a pacy plot and engaging characters. It paints a vivid portrait with honesty, sympathy and wit, of a much neglected milieu, and it addresses urgent social questions.
It is horrifying, tender and funny. In this case, though, my praise is quite irrelevant because – unusually for any novel, let alone a first one – Pigeon English is critic-proof.