Gradually engaging, but not memorable

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	• Black Swan Green: A Novel David Mitchell Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2007 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 63 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Gradually engaging, but not memorable

I've heard many good things about David Mitchell (but have not yet read his others), and was provoked by the blurb proclaiming Black Swan Green as a British Catcher in the Rye. Ultimately, however, I found this book to be fine but uninspiring. The narrator mostly came off as being dim, rather than just being 13, but I don't think that was the point. In fact, I could not get The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time out of my head as I was reading Black Swan Green--though the former is narrated by an autistic. So I take that as a bad sign. I did gradually become interested in Black Swan Green as it progressed, and very much enjoyed the chapter with the eccentric Belgian poetry fan (who, I understand, appears in other Mitchell books). There are some clever, intriguing, and funny moments in the book. I also enjoy the bildungsroman genre, and did appreciate the challenges of conveying a coming of age. But this particular book also contains an overwhelming number of 80's Brit colloquialisms and a general sense of exaggeration - or at least excessive artistic license - regarding the life of a 13 year old.

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Wonderful coming of age novel

Jason Taylor is 13 and grows up in a small village, Black Swan Green. He has all the usual problems boys of that age have: his sister is a [...], his parents do not understand him and there is a very strict hierarchy among the village boys (from absolute losers to the most popular boy of the village) and you have to constantly watch your act to make sure that you do not become a loser. And apart from that he is a secret poet and is pestered by "Hangman": a to Jason very real personality who impedes his speech by giving him a stammer, making him constantly aware of what he is saying.

In the beginning of the book Jason does what all small boys do: play games, dislike girls and fantasize about hidden tunnels. But as the book progresses, Jason is becoming less of a child. The growing apart of his parents certainly helps, as do the wise lessons of an elderly woman who explains to him that a poet should always be proud of his work and withstand criticisms.

David Mitchell is a wonderful writer: from every sentence it is clear that he loves writing. He is also deeply empathic with Jason: this is not a grown-up, but truly the voice and feelings of a 13-year old. (as far as a grown-up like myself can judge and remember this). A wonderful book to read.

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Survivors of Adolescence Unite!

The characters in this book, from the narrator/protagonist 13-year-old Jason Taylor, to those who make the briefest of appearances, are so richly drawn, so multi-layered, and speak with such convincing dialogue, that the created world of the small English town of the title becomes as real as the town of the one's own youth. That isn't to say this novel is comforting; Jason experiences a 1982 that is both brutal and unjust yet ultimately transformative. Non-British readers of Black Swan Green will note the preponderance of unfamiliar slang, from the superlatives ace and epic to the personal slurs grebo and gyppo. Like the snippets of poetry that dart in and out through the text, the use of slang serves to elevate the novel from mere coming-of-age tale to what should by all rights be deemed a literary masterpiece.

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Black Swan Succeeds

A look into the bullying society prevalent during 1980s Thatcher England. We experience one year in the life of a 13 year old artistic middle class British boy pressured by bullying peers and an unstable family life. His poetic imagination and sensitivity makes life practically unbearable, and yet he survives. Authentic language,excellent characterizations and a satisfying conclusion. Good read.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

From award-winning writer David Mitchell comes a sinewy, meditative novel of boyhood on the cusp of adulthood and the old on the cusp of the new.
Black Swan tracks a single year in what is, for thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982. But the thirteen chapters, each a short story in its own right, create an exquisitely observed world that is anything but sleepy. A world of Kissingeresque realpolitik enacted in boys? games on a frozen lake; of ?nightcreeping? through the summer backyards of strangers; of the tabloid-fueled thrills of the Falklands War and its human toll; of the cruel, luscious Dawn Madden and her power-hungry boyfriend, Ross Wilcox; of a certain Madame Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck, an elderly bohemian emigré who is both more and less than she appears; of Jason?s search to replace his dead grandfather?s irreplaceable smashed watch before the crime is discovered; of first cigarettes, first kisses, first Duran Duran Lps, and first deaths; of Margaret Thatcher?s recession; of Gypsies camping in the woods and the hysteria they inspire; and, even closer to home, of a slow-motion divorce in four seasons.
Pointed, funny, profound, left-field, elegiac, and painted with the stuff of life, Black Swan Green is David Mitchell?s subtlest and most effective achievement to date.

From the Hardcover edition.

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