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Wondrous Word Wednesday : A Stinking Pikey!

I only have one word for  Wondrous Word Wednesday, the fun weekly meme hosted by Diane at BermudaOnion.net.

Pikey comes from the novel Broken by Daniel Clay. The novel, inspired by Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird has been made into a film starring Cillian Murphy and Tim Roth. And I'm pretty jazzed because Mr. Clay has offered to write a guest post on my blog about the experience of having his novel adapted into a film!!

I've only just begun the book but am hooked already. Here's the bookdescription from HarperCollins.

Until that fateful afternoon, Skunk Cunningham had been a normal little girl, playing on the curb in front of her house. Rick Buck­ley had been a normal geeky teen­ager, hosing off his brand-new car. Bob Oswald had been a normal sociopathic single father of five slutty daughters, charging furiously down the side­walk. Then Bob was beating Rick to a bloody pulp, right there in the Buckleys' driveway, and life on Drummond Square was never the same again.

Inspired by Harper Lee's classic To Kill a Mockingbird, Clay's brilliantly observed and darkly funny novel follows the sudden unraveling of a sub­urban community after a single act of thoughtless cruelty.

PIKEY 

"- all the other kids he'd met in Hedge End so far had called him a stinking pikey, and left him to play on his own."

Okay so  pikey isn't a compliment.

According to the Collins English Dictionary
1. a gypsy or vagrant
2. a member of the underclass

That completely makes sense as Dillon, the 15 year old boy speaking here has just told the group that he's a gypsy. Dictionary.com adds that it's derived from piker, turnpike.  Again, referencing the gypsy nomadic lifestyle.

That's the only new word for me, Clay's novel takes place in a society where the simple language of the streets makes sense. I really can't wait to read the rest of the book - I've just read the sample and am waiting for the hard copy - and then, the movie! Plus a visit from Mr. Clay.  I'll keep you posted  in the meantime thanks for stopping by and check out the trailer with French subtitles for Broken below.