Black Swan Green

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.

If it weren't David Mitchell writing this novel, I'd probably have expected less and liked it more. It's well crafted, well written, funny and interesting. That said, it's also a straightforward portrayal of growing up in a working class town in England (apparently, it's based on Mitchell's own experiences). In other words, it's nothing like Cloud Atlas or any of Mitchell's more complex and ambitious novels. Mitchell's virtuosity is in evidence, in his wonderful writing style, character development (the dad is particularly richly drawn and quite hilarious) and plot construction. Also, there are some characters that overlap with Cloud Atlas so that's fun. A good read -- but be prepared for a "memoir" type read (although crafted more tightly -- like a novel), not a Cloud Atlas.

I should probably start with a confession: I am in the minority of people who didn't particularly like Catcher in the Rye. I didn't necessarily dislike it, but it just never spoke to me in the way it spoke to so many others. I didn't fully understand why until I read Black Swan Green. For me (and I suspect many others), my youth was not one of prep schools, running away, prostitutes, or mental breakdowns. Most importantly, it was not full of dramatic ANGST, in the way that it is portrayed in Catcher in the Rye. Instead, like Jason Taylor in Black Swan Green, life was simply too busy for wallowing in angst ... "busy" in the sense of mundane adventures (that nevertheless feel more consequential than anything else in the world at the moment), family drama, and the interminable boredom punctuated by moments of terror known as school! As much as one would like to hit the pause button, the merry-go-round of life never stops, especially for a young adult. Mitchell does an outstanding job capturing the day to day excitement, fear, loneliness, and dilemmas actually faced by a 13 year old--many of which can be easily generalized to the world of adults, which is no less full of pecking orders, pressure to look cool/competent, jingoism, fear of failure, etc. than the world of children. In fact, this is part of what makes Mitchell's story so gripping: despite the incredible detail and the specific setting in 1980s England, this is a microcosm representative of the world at large. As a result, Black Swan Green is an extremely universal tale--I felt like I could relate incredibly well to the story, despite growing up neither in the 1980s nor in England! Black Swan Green was the third tale of Mitchell's that I've read (Cloud Atlas was the first; a character or two from that tale make a brief cameo in this book, in what felt like a slightly self-indulgent move by Mitchell, although it also was a bit clever as a meta-motif of the "everything-is-interconnected" lessons from that novel). Whereas Cloud Atlas is extremely "macro" in scope, Black Swan Green is much more "micro" in terms of geographic scope and time. Yet, it is equally gripping and has an equally important message. I fell in love with Mitchell's writing thanks to Cloud Atlas ... the infatuation only deepened thanks to Black Swan Green: this is an intelligent, gripping, and moving tale that easily belongs in the same conversation with some of literature's great works in the bildungsroman genre.

I wasn't sure that this book would hold my interest because it is almost like a diary of one year in the life of a thirteen year old boy, but it did! I have read several other novels by David Mitchell (not in the order that they were published) and have loved most of them. I was also intrigued by the fact that several characters show up in multiple novels of his, so I am now "back-tracking" to find out more about these characters. Anyway, this young man endures an awkward and painful year, and his story kept me interested from beginning to end. Enough so, that I am going to re-read some other novels by this author because his ability to interweave characters throughout time and around the world is done so well. I want to revisit what happens with Jason later (I believe, in The Bone Clocks, a most unusual story of a totally different genre.) I am a fan!

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.

Interesting...the ending was a little sudden and flat..being British I understood the lingo.

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.

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.

The writing was beautiful and poetic - captured the wonder and turmoil of the this very special adolescent and his family and friends. Loved it!

A Good Read!

I would consider myself a David Mitchell fan and I have read a few of his books and really enjoyed them so I was excited to start another of his works. In this book we are in 1982 with 13-year-old Jason Taylor. Jason lives with his parents and older sister in Home Counties England, against the ominous background of his bullying for a speech impediment, the Falklands War, and the slow disintegration of his parents' marriage. It feels like Mitchell does an excellent job of getting into the head of an adolescent boy – the trivial obsessions that seem so important, the painful desire to fit in and the not quite understanding of the nuances and undercurrents of the adult world. For anyone who remembers the ’80s he also pushes all the right cultural reference buttons – food, cars, music – to give a strong sense of time and place. As with all good coming of age stories it veers from-laugh-out-loud to toe-curling within a few paragraphs and I was immediately taken by Jason and absorbed into his life. I think there is a lot in this book that people can relate to even if you didn’t grow up in England in the 80’s. In usual Mitchell style the writing is wonderful, there are so many sentences and paragraphs that were highlighted in my Kindle and the characters felt so real to me. Overall another excellent Mitchell book and I’m trying not to jump straight into the other 3 of his books I have on my Kindle currently!

Excellent ! Cet auteur possède une maîtrise absolue du langage. Il se met dans la peau d'un adolescent de treize ans trouvant exactement le jargon des années quatre-vingt. Drôle et profond à la fois.

"Black Swan Green" tut weh, und zwar richtig, und noch mehr, wenn man sich vorstellt, wie viel Selbsterlebtes David Mitchell wohl in die Figur des dreizehnjährigen Außenseiters Jason Taylor hineingeschrieben hat. Die lieblosen Eltern und die herablassende ältere Schwester sind schon schlimm genug, aber noch schwerer hat er es in der Schule: In einem Alter, wo die Reputation unter Gleichaltrigen der Maßstab für das Lebensglück sind, würde er gerne das, was ihm körperlich abgeht, mit seiner Cleverness wettmachen, allein das verhindert seine Stotterei. Bullys machen ihm das Leben zur Hölle, die Lehrer, die das eigentlich merken müssten, mischen sich eher halbherzig ein bzw. stoßen sogar noch ins selbe Horn. Nur sein Freund Dean, Außenseiter wie er, und seine Liebe zur Poesie, die ihm den Rest geben würde, wenn sie denn bekannt würde, helfen ihm durch den Tag. Und natürlich die kleinen Tricks, mit denen er die Klippen seines Sprachfehlers umschifft, zumindest manchmal, aber beileibe nicht immer, und leider meistens dann nicht, wenn es drauf ankommt. Die Situation spitzt sich im Laufe der Zeit so zu, dass es einem Angst und Bange wird - Jugendliche haben sich schon aus weniger schwerwiegenden Gründen das Leben genommen. Denn weil in manchen Situationen sein Gewissen doch stärker ist als sein Wunsch, anerkannt zu werden, und auch mit einigem Pech stürzt er in freiem Fall die Reputationsleiter hinunter. Man kann das Buch nicht aus der Hand legen, so geht einem Jasons Geschichte an die Nieren. In die Sprache muss man sich etwas einlesen. Es spricht eben ein Dreizehnjähriger, nicht ganz dialektfrei, vor allem seine "Kameraden" nicht, und streckenweise gibt es mehr Apostrophe als Vokale, aber man gewöhnt sich recht schnell daran. Es gibt übrigens ein Wiedersehen mit Eva Crommelynck, geb. Ayrs, aus dem Frobisher-Segment des "Cloud Atlas", und Hugo Lamb aus den "Bone Clocks" gibt sich hier schon mal die Ehre als Jasons cooler Cousin. Diese gegenseitigen Referenzen in Mitchells Romanen machen einen Teil ihres Reizes aus, und mit "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet" muss ich noch eine wichtige Lücke schließen.