37 pages • 1 hour read
Stephen KelmanPigeon English
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2011A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
JuneChapter Summaries & Analyses
Summary: “June”
This month begins with Harri and Dean on a stakeout for the killer, carefully observing everyone who passes them for what they deemed proof of guilt culled from Dean’s television knowledge. Dean explains DNA to Harri and why it is so helpful in solving crimes.
Back at the apartment towers, Harri’s mother is asking Auntie Sonia to explain how she hurt herself and ended up with a bandaged nose and bruised eye. Auntie Sonia blames her own clumsiness and goes quiet when Julius reenters the room.
At school, Poppy shows Harri how to write their initials into a desk to memorialize their love: P.M. + H.O. I.D.S.T. (“If Destroyed Still True”). Harri recalls, “[i]t felt brutal seeing it there. It felt important” (164). He values what he has with Poppy and is thrilled and relieved that sex does not have to be involved, making it even better to have her as his girlfriend.
Later, Harri and Lydia are watching the news and the newscaster is talking about the dead boy and entreating anyone with information to come forward. Harri watches Lydia’s face closely, observing that “her face was all sad like she knew him” (168). Harri continues to think about the dead boy and wonders if the boy is in heaven.
In the schoolyard, there is a massive fight between Miquita and Chanelle, so big that “you actually thought they were going to kill each other. You wanted them to stop. It wasn’t funny anymore. Somebody was going to die” (177). Chanelle had said something to go against the Dell Farm Crew and Miquita was trying to put her in her place. Miquita, however, continues to deal with her own oppression. Dating Killa, he frequently burns her with his lighter, which she allows. When Lydia and Harri see them together outside the Youth Club, Harri goes through his “signs of guilt” mental checklist, noting that Killa exhibits at least four of the signs, which he logs in his notes to share with Dean, marking Killa as a suspect.
Dean insists that they need to get Killa’s DNA if they are going to prove anything. The opportunity to do so presents itself at the school cafeteria, when a few of the Dell Farm Crew are messing around. Pretending to be cops catching someone, Killa is held up against a window, conveniently leaving all of his fingerprints. Creating a diversion, Dean rushes over with the sellotape to collect the prints. This small victory “felt like the best kind of hutious [slang for ‘scary’], like I owned a piece of Killa’s life” (198). Killa demands that Harri return his fingerprints to him, but Harri claims that he has thrown them away.
The building of evidence continues when the Harri and Dean are playing outside and a ball lands on a roof. When Dean retrieves it, he also finds a wallet containing the dead boy’s photograph. The wallet is also sticky, possibly from blood.
“June” Analysis
Harri and Dean begin to dig more deeply into their investigation and their approaches become more nuanced as they search for these “signs of guilt,” a fairly problematic barometer. It largely shows a very innocent understanding of guilt, looking more to superficial signs rather than penetrating deeply into psychological components. In some ways, however, their very uncomplicated understanding of the world allows them to more effectively pursue and narrow down their suspects.
They do the “proper” detective work and luckily obtain Killa’s DNA with the sellotape. While that is not what ultimately implicates him, it does serve as a catalyst. Harri’s preoccupation with fingerprints and identity takes many forms throughout the novel. That he feels as if he possessed a piece of Killa’s life is no slight comment, especially considered in light of his Auntie Sonia’s anxiety over her own fingerprints and the consequences of having or not having them.
Harri also comes to the realization that a person can be perfectly good and still suffer. He thinks about the dead boy’s needless, inexplicable death, as well as his baby sister’s fever and the possibility that it could take her life. This fear that one’s own agency and desire to be good cannot necessarily save or keep a person from harm is disarming, but also becomes a reason for Harri to reassert his sense of God and faith. His conversations with his pigeon read like stand-ins for a conversation with God. He wants to know how the future will unfold and asks about heaven, continually searching for answers and comfort to assuage his ever-growing anxiety and fear. When he sacrifices his lucky alligator tooth, he views it as an offering to God, the only viable means he can think of to attempt to put a stop to all the suffering he witnesses.
