Book Review: The Pelican Crossing

One of the great pleasures of the Substack era

One of the great pleasures of Substack is the combination of discovery and community. Somehow you find things you like and feel connected to. Either Substack has a magnificent algorithm or it has managed to transcend the limiting boundaries of algorithms altogether.

Adrian P. Conway’s The Pelican Crossing. Available at Adrian’s Substack.

One thing I want to do more of in this newsletter is to shine a light on some treasured discoveries here.

Adrian P. Conway’s writing has been a wonderful discovery, and he has been a very generous commenter on this particular Substack. So when he announced that his new novella, The Pelican Crossing, was published, I was excited to head over to Amazon and buy it (it's an oligarchs world and we're all just renters, after all). Amazon may be evil, but it is at least efficient and the book showed up two days later. That night, I sat by the fire pit in my back yard and read it straight through.

The story is very English. It follows the love story of two young people in London. Their lives are controlled by the gang affiliations they were born into. Hovering over their love is a London sharply defined by neighborhoods and the warlords that brutally keep the boundaries of those streets.
I won't spoil the plot, but I do want to highlight a couple of things I loved about the book.

I was immediately captivated by the voices Conway channels. These street kids speak in a local slang through thick accents that Conway represents phonetically. It's an immersive reading experience and the result is the construction of a city built as much from language as architecture.

The other thing I want to highlight is the fact that The Pelican Crossing, though it tells the story of entirely modern street kids, frames the story as a Shakespearian tragedy. The famous Millais painting of Ophelia floating in the water looms over the tale and draws attention to the Romeo and Juliet drama that Conway has constructed.

The story is moving and beautiful and packs an emotional whollop in an economical package. Conway has promised a full-length novel set in the story world of The Pelican Crossing and I look forward to it with great interest.

While I have you, I really do recommend that you check out

Adrian's Fiction

for more of his work. He is a Substack highlight for me.