Black Swan Green Paperback – February 27, 2007

And like that, I’ve read every book David Mitchell has published so far, and I have to wait for his next book with bated breath. And while I’m a bit heartbroken that I have no more new Mitchell to read, I’m somewhat glad I ended with Black Swan Green, which feels like Mitchell’s most personal book, and turns a coming-of-age slice of life in 1980’s Britain into something incredible. In other words, just another masterpiece for one of the finest authors alive today.Like most of Mitchell’s books, Black Swan Green is composed of individual vignettes that combine to make something larger. But while many of Mitchell’s novels consist of multiple narrators, allowing him to throw his voice (narratively speaking), Black Swan Green is entirely told from the perspective of Jason Taylor, a 13-year-old boy from Worcestershire, England. It follows Jason over the course of a single year – specifically, from January 1982 to January 1983 – as he deals with bullies at school, his stammering problem, the departure of his older sister for school, fights at home, and his own desire to be something other than the typical Worcestershire boy. In other words, Black Swan Green is a typical coming-of-age story in so many ways…and yet, it feels like so little else out there, thanks in no small part to Mitchell’s rich voice. While he may be confining himself to a single narrator this time, none of that detracts from the beauty of his story, which never steps outside of its young perspective to comment on itself, instead letting the reader make the jumps for themselves. More than that, reading Black Swan Green as an adult lets us see the situations for what they are, removing Jason’s adolescent worries while reminding us constantly of how awful and overwhelming life could be at that age.But not content to simply give us a slice of adolescent life, Mitchell plunges us back into the early 1980’s in Britain, as the Falklands War explodes and Margaret Thatcher surges in popularity. It gives the book a wonderful lived-in feel, allowing the world to come to life without ever feeling insisted-upon or forced, and gives Jason’s story an impact that a generic setting could never match. (And, of course, there’s the fact that Mitchell is clearly somewhat writing his own story here, including the stammer that shapes so much of Jason’s life; it’s hard not to feel Mitchell’s experience shaping so much of what you read.)The result is a rich, engaging novel, one that creates a world that I happily lived in and never wanted to leave. I got angry at Jason’s bullies, savored his odd conversations with an elderly neighbor who sees beneath his surface, ached for him as I realized just how bad his home life was getting, and got caught up in his pining for girls and the excitement of his first, tentative relationships. It’s the rare adolescent story told by an adult that remembers not only the exhilaration and boundless nature of that age, but all the tension and awfulness that filled our lives.And beyond that, there’s Mitchell’s beautiful, rich prose, which gives every supporting character their own voice, makes Jason’s commentary on the world sing without ever feeling too old, and just plain works, making the novel the rich experience that it is. You’ll know Jason Taylor by the end of this, with all of his flaws, wants, needs, and hopes, and even if the book is just a slice of his life, there’s a sense that we’re seeing glimpses of the man he will become in here – and the man we want him to become. It’s a wonderfully funny, personal, rich book from a master writer – another essential read from an author who seems to write nothing but.

I bought this book because of Cloud Atlas - I just wanted to get grounded a little more in his work before attacking his most recent. I must say, for the first 25 pages or so I wasn't sure it was a good decision - early, odd work by developing young author??? But I am so glad I hung in there. First, some of the early difficulty comes from being put firmly and deeply inside the mind of an adolescent male. Secondly, the narrator thinks/speaks in a punk/young/British patois which takes some time to become fluent in. I suspect, in retrospect, that it may be a little autobiographical - how else could he have captured the mind of this young man so deeply, so well? For those of you looking for specifics, the subject is a young upper middle-class boy who stutters and so is the victim of bullying at school, and a failing marriage at home. And, BTW, for fellow Cloud Atlas fanatics there are a couple of clever references here that only you and your ilk will get. Anyway, buy it, read it, fall in love.

Jason Taylor is the smart, funny, and especially endearing first-person narrator of this gem, which takes place in a small English town in the 1980s. Jason has a stammer, which is different from a stutter, according to Jason, and it plagues his thirteen-year-old life almost as much as the bullies at school. And if these problems weren’t torture enough, his parents’ marriage is on the rocks, and his sister is leaving for college. (The prospect of a broken home is never really funny, but Jason’s mom hilariously punishes his father for his infidelity with an expensive project that backfires.) Jason’s numerous adventures fill the pages of this novel, the most telling of which, I think, is when he finds the lost wallet of his primary nemesis. Another good one is his race through a backyard gauntlet which he has to negotiate in order to join a vaunted school gang, and this obstacle course seems to be a metaphor for the many pitfalls of adolescence which he has to weave his way through on a daily basis. Jason strives for acceptance into a peer group that is obviously not worthy of him, but, along the way, he learns some valuable life lessons about love, death, bigotry, and honesty—to name a few. We also discover late in the novel that the burden of guilt weighs him down, even though he really bears no responsibility for the tragedy in question. In other words, he holds himself to too high a standard at times, and he’s a sensitive kid, writing poetry under a pseudonym in order to avoid ridicule. My only complaint, and it’s a minor one, is that Jason’s narration is full of contractions, even double contractions, such as “shouldn’t’ve,” that are difficult to read. I think the author intends for these contractions to lend authenticity to Jason’s voice, but that authenticity would be easier to listen to than to read, and I think Jason would be just as authentic on the page without this distraction.

mitchell has taken the life of a thirteen-year-old youth in a british hamlet and given him lord over his own story. his language, the boyhood slang of place, the universal talk of parents and their lives glimpsed by teenagers too young to read clues and visiting in-laws at the supper table, rings pitch perfect. from home to school to the ranging outdoors boys everywhere explore, the games, the fights, the bullying, a world shrouded in fears becoming their adventures, the initiations, the erotics of puberty, each chapter is a path in a dark wood constantly bursting with shafts of light. mitchell reveals delight after delight, rising on the allusions of john clare and dylan thomas, his young narrator a writer of poetry himself, something he can’t share with his pals, except his cool cousin (who doesn’t have a cool cousin or older friend?) who’s read wilfred owen and siegfried sassoon. fortunate for us, we have his idiom and voice. funny, melancholic, heartbreakingly beautiful, david mitchell proves he can write about anything in any genre.