Looking After Pigeon is set up like one long diary entry. Pigeon- in her adult years- has decided to write down the events of the summer that changed her life. She was only 5 when her father abandons the family and leaves Pigeon and her siblings scrambling to fill the void. Dove, the oldest, finds comfort in the attention that others bestow on her. Robin, her brother, finds solace in a fortune-teller. Pigeon tries to find comfort in everyone but deep down, she just wants her father to come home and comfort her himself. It is a story that most of us find ourselves in at some point in our lives. Someone else's choices changes the course we were on and no matter how hard we fight to turn around and go back to the path that is familiar and secure, we are powerless.

I only gave this book 2 stars because I didn't feel like the writer fully developed her characters. They all seemed to be going through this drama together but never fully interacting. Markson would introduce a concept but then nothing would come of it. She makes a big statement about how this one summer changed Pigeon's life but then by the end of the book she only shows you a little of the mark it made. It was a quick read but not a book I would recommend. ( )

Looking After Pigeon is a quick read which is a blessing as there is not much there to hold one's attention for long. The summary of the story told it all of a commonly visit theme of tragedy during childhood which shapes who you are as an adult. It was a decently written book, but not one that I would recommend. ( )

Pigeon is five years old – the youngest of three children – when her beloved father abandons them to the care of their eccentric and cold mother, Joan. Joan has named all her children after birds – Dove, Robin and Pigeon.

Still I believe, as I am sure our mother did, that the names we are given as children have much to do with the people we later become. Perhaps we do not really fly. It is done these days only safely aboard commercial airlines, and none of us have migrated far from home. Yet I am certain something of what our mother tried to impart in us at our birth is with us still, and always will be. - from Looking After Pigeon, page 11 -

After Pigeon’s father leaves, Joan packs up her children…with very few of their belongings…and moves to her brother’s home on the New Jersey shore. It is the beginning of summer and a new life for all of them. Each character will deal with their losses and fears differently. Joan will join a cult-like church and find a new lover; Dove (the eldest child) will look for acceptance in the arms of older men; Robin (the eldest boy) will find hope in reading the future in tarot cards; and young Pigeon will look for her father in the kindness of her Uncle Edward, and in the generosity of her mother’s lover Cary. Pigeon longs for an intact family. She misses the love of her father…and she hopes that he will one day return to her. Her habit of constructing paper families from the pictures of catalogs is heartbreaking.

I studied their faces carefully for my game; you could not just choose a person willy-nilly without consideration for their looks and disposition. For I was creating families and I did not take the responsibility lightly. All sons and daughters needed to look like their parents. They required friends of nearly the same age. Grandparents had to be older, of course, though still sprightly, attractive. And they all needed to share similar coloring and size. I had ten families already, had made clothes for them out of construction paper, and even provided them with pets – dogs and cats clipped from a pet supply firm. And although they were only made of the shiny catalogue paper, their lives were as intricate and involved as any real family’s ever were. – from Looking After Pigeon, page 102 -

Looking After Pigeon is narrated by an adult Pigeon who is looking back on that fateful summer when all that she had known and trusted disappeared. She wishes to uncover the truths of her upbringing, to gain an understanding of what happened so that she can move forward in her life and perhaps develop the trust she needs to connect with her significant other.

Maud Carol Markson’s latest novel is a look beneath the surface of a broken family through the eyes of the youngest daughter. Written in honest, simple prose…the book examines the impact of our earliest experiences on the development of our self-esteem, trust and world view. It also looks at our deepest fear – that of being abandoned and left to take care of ourselves. Who among us does not wish to be protected, cared for, and loved unconditionally? For Pigeon, security is wrenched from her suddenly and without explanation. She is often left to her own devices, to wander through the streets or along the beach alone. The adults in Pigeon’s life are mostly absent – either physically or emotionally – and are unreliable. Even Uncle Edward, who obviously loves and cares about Pigeon, is not always available to her.

Looking After Pigeon is a difficult story to read. It is not a terribly positive look at marriage, parenting or the family. And yet it is a thoughtful and intriguing book which continued to spin around in my head after I finished it. Despite its slim size (less than 200 pages), this is a deep book which I read slowly. I grew to care about Pigeon and empathize with what was lacking in her life. I found myself feeling anger toward the adults in her life who had relinquished their responsibilities and left her feeling vulnerable and lonely. Sadly, stories like this are found not only in fiction. Children often find themselves, in real life, alone or abandoned and without adults who make them feel safe. I think it takes courage for an author to tackle subjects like these in fiction. Too often readers want “feel good” novels and shy away from books like Looking After Pigeon.

Markson is a talented writer and Looking After Pigeon is an engrossing literary novel. Despite its serious subject matter, the book ends with a glimmer of hope for Pigeon and leaves the reader with a positive message – that despite flaws in our childhoods, we can choose to move forward and find joy as adults.

Readers who appreciate well-written literary fiction will want to read this book.

Recommended. ( )

Looking After Pigeon tells the tale of a woman named Pigeon, reminiscing about the summer when she was just five and her life was dramatically changed forever. Through the eyes of the young girl we witness the small idiosyncrasies of her family after her father mysteriously abandons them one spring morning. Amid the confusion of Pigeon and her siblings, her mother decides to move the family to the Jersey Shore to live with their uncle Edward. Although Uncle Edward is very affable with the children, he is frequently away from the house, as is their mother who has had to take a job to support them. Because of this the three children are mainly left to their own devices over the summer. Dove, the oldest, decides to take a job at the local diner and quickly gets enmeshed in relationships and flirtations with older men, while the middle child Robin makes the acquaintance of a fortune teller with whom he spends much of his time. This leaves Pigeon alone most of the time to fend for herself in the small beach-side house. As each family member struggles to come to terms with the circumstances of their new lives, they slowly drift further and further from each other and their old lives. A touching and revealing coming of age story, Looking After Pigeon captures the imagination and determination of a little girl to understand the adult world around her.

This book had a lot of different elements working in it, and I felt that some were more successful than others. One of the first things I noticed was that the writing was very fluid and lyrical and that the narrative seemed to flow very smoothly. The writing style felt perfect for the story, because the language was unhurried and polished in a way that seemed to reflect the circumstances. There were no jarring or startling aspects in the way the story was told; instead there was a beautiful feel of economy and deliberateness in the author's choice of word and style.

On the other hand, it did take a bit of effort to believe that the story was told from a five-year-old's point of view, because much of the introspection and dialogue given from that point of view seemed like it came from a much older mentality. In some ways this kept me from really being able to relate to the book because it took me out of the story and kept me wondering how a five-year-old would have been able to think in such a sophisticated manner. For example, during much of the story Pigeon is left alone to take care of herself. Now, I know quite a few five-year-olds and I can't imagine that even one of them would be capable of remaining home alone for even an hour, much less a whole summer. I also used my experience with this age group to try to figure out if Pigeon's thoughts and reactions were in line with other typical five-year-olds, and I have to say that they were not. Much of her reasoning and thought processes were that of a much older child, or even an adult. While the story was told as the recollections of an adult, I did not feel that those recollections could have been accurate because I felt that the actual immaturity and innocence of a five-year-old were not really accurately captured.

I also had some issues with the way that the family interacted. Their mother seemed very unmindful of her children and was somewhat cold towards them emotionally, while the children were extremely disrespectful and snide to her. Though this family was not very close or conscientious of each other, I felt that the way they acted towards one another was a great catalyst for the events that took place in the closing sections of the book. Though it did bother me somewhat, it really worked very well for the story. I also thought that Pigeon's longing and fretting about her father felt very authentic, and I imagine that any child dealing with abandonment by a parent would feel much the same as she did.

One of the things I found really interesting about this book was seeing how each child manifested the loss of their father in a different yet entirely convincing way. Their loss of an integral part of their family had varying consequences for all three of them, and I felt that each was acting out their unmet needs and desires in a way that highlighted character aspects of each of the children individually. Keeping this in mind, I began to see their struggles as a painful processes of grief and change that was shaping them into people that were hopelessley trying to gain a foothold in their lives. I found this aspect of the book to be particualrly moving and resonant for me, and I felt the author was really able to capture those feelings very well.

Though I had some issues with parts of this book, overall I felt that the structure of the story and the writing was done very well. I felt that the author was able to capture the prevailing moods of loss, longing and regret very powerfully in her narrative. I think that the overarching story was one that was very moving and emotional, and that if you are the type of reader who can overlook the minor quibbles of the narrative voice, you might really enjoy this book. It certainly gave me a lot to think about. ( )

Pigeon is five. She is the youngest of three children, all named after birds. Her sister Dove is about 10 years older than her and her brother Robin is 10. Her mother, Joan, married their father to get away from her family and has found herself disillusioned with motherhood. Things only get worse when Pigeon's father loses his job and leaves the family with no means of support. They are forced, in the dead of night, to flee their New York apartment to go live with Joan's brother Edward, who lives in a beach house not far from Atlantic City. It is there that those left in her family are forced to pick up the pieces and figure things out on their own.

At the beginning of the novel, an adult Pigeon is encouraged by her unnamed live-in boyfriend to write about the summer she moved to live with her Uncle Edward when she refuses to see a psychiatrist. That, in conjunction with the book's title, leaves me waiting from the first page for something extremely terrible to happen to Pigeon. What I imagine never takes place. Part of me is relieved because of this as I finished the book, but part of me is also wondering why the novel began that way. Having a father desert you at the age of five and then be left alone a good deal of the time to take care of yourself would be traumatic. Still, I never was able to relax into the story because I was waiting for the "real" reason summers made her blue and her lover wanted her to do something to look after her mental health. I could never really warm up to Uncle Edward or her mother's boyfriend Cary for fear of what they were going to do to her.

I never really warmed up to Dove or Pigeon's names, although Robin's name seemed like a good fit. He was by far my favorite character in the book. Likewise, I never really warmed up to Joan. Even in the scene after Pigeon comes back from her trip to New York City with Edward, I found her extremely cold. Just that little bit of warmth wasn't enough to change my opinion of her. Living that summer the way she did, lost in the current of everyone else's drama, I can also understand why Pigeon holds everyone at arm's length, even down to leaving her current day lover nameless. He could be anyone from her romantic life past, present, or even future. Despite the glimmer of hope that she might one day open herself up more fully to someone else, she never names him. I found that quite sad, yet authentically Pigeon.

I wish I could say that I enjoyed Looking After Pigeon more than I did. The detachment I felt from the narrator from the very beginning carried through for me as a reader. Because I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop as soon as Uncle Edward entered the picture, I didn't really engage with otherwise sympathetic characters. There was one touch I found very nice. Pigeon would make her own paper dolls from people in magazines and spend her time creating stories of their lives. More than anything else, it was in this detail that I felt closest to Pigeon. Still, I found myself wondering how this story would have been told from Robin's perspective. There was that touch of magic in his soul that might have added just the right touch for me. ( )