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Black Swan Green

By David Mitchell

(55)

| Hardcover | 9781400063796

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Book Description

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 EnContinue

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.

Critics

  • 'Black Swan Green' by David Mitchell

    Jason Taylor, who lives in a small Worcestershire village called Black Swan Green, is 13 years old. When he's not at home with his squabbling parents and an older sister who wants to leave him in the lurch by fleeing to university as soon as she can, ... (read full critics)

    readingmatters published on Mon, 27 Sep 2010

  • About a boy poet

    Black Swan Green David Mitchell Sceptre £16.99, pp371 'It is the bliss of childhood,' William Gaddis wrote in his great novel, The Recognitions, 'that we are being warped most when we know it the least.' Novels written from the child's point of view ... (read full critics)

    guardian.co.uk published on Sat, 25 Sep 2010

7 Reviews

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  • 5 people find this helpful

    Semi-autobiography of David Mitchell. Nicely plotted, beautifully written (though many of his fans and critics do think he toned down a little bit too much in this book). But I guess this style suits this book the best? It's about the 13 months a 13 years old boy had been through. I am glad that he ... (continue)

    Semi-autobiography of David Mitchell. Nicely plotted, beautifully written (though many of his fans and critics do think he toned down a little bit too much in this book). But I guess this style suits this book the best? It's about the 13 months a 13 years old boy had been through. I am glad that he did not turn the book into soap opera or self-help kind of thing. Parents get divorced? Well that's life. A bit messy at the first glance, yet life actually is a quilt, we knit different pieces of fabric into one. So as life. Every part of life seems to be departed from each other yet they are all parts of us. Conflicting whole.

    It's a very good book. At least to me, when it comes to youth or growing up, this book is better than "Kafka on the shore" by Haruka Murakami.

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    張小張・Cons said on Dec 24, 2006 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

  • 3 people find this helpful

    This novel is about the minefield that daily life forms for a thirteen-year old boy with a stutter, who's parents do not get along. It's part Adrian Mole, but lots wiser. I absolutely loved it.

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    annemarie said on Apr 30, 2007 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

  • 2 people find this helpful

    I love growing-up books, especially those where you can tell the kids within are not going to emerge into the adult world all shiny and happy - no, they won't even settle for normal . I've read too many to list, but so far the notable ones include Salinger's classic Catcher In The Rye, Toby Litt's d ... (continue)

    I love growing-up books, especially those where you can tell the kids within are not going to emerge into the adult world all shiny and happy - no, they won't even settle for normal . I've read too many to list, but so far the notable ones include Salinger's classic Catcher In The Rye, Toby Litt's deadkidsongs, Iain Banks' The Wasp Factory and Patrick McCabe's The Butcher Boy.

    I'm now officially adding Black Swan Green into this prestigious list. If, these imaginary inventories of mine generated and gave out equally hypothetical awards, of course.

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    Danelectrico said on Dec 5, 2007 | Add your feedback

  • I'm a sucker for growing-up novels. This is just as delicious as "Holes" by Louis Sachar. BSG, however, is perhaps even more gripping with its social realistic setting.

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    Yenney Lai said on Oct 6, 2011 | Add your feedback

  • Black Swan Green

    As the author David Mitchell was born in 1969 there is no doubt at all in my mind that this novel is strongly based on his own life experiences. It is no surprise therefore that as he and Jason were both thirteen in 1982 that he succeeds in portraying the protagonist Jason Taylor so well.

    When ... (continue)

    As the author David Mitchell was born in 1969 there is no doubt at all in my mind that this novel is strongly based on his own life experiences. It is no surprise therefore that as he and Jason were both thirteen in 1982 that he succeeds in portraying the protagonist Jason Taylor so well.

    When I first started the book I was not at all sure it was going to appeal to me. My husband, having read and enjoyed it himself, fortunately encouraged me to preserve. I am glad he did so as I enjoyed it more and more as it progressed. Nostalgically it recalls in great detail life in the 1980’s in rural England. A time, I remember well when I was bringing up a young family.

    Black Swan Green is the name of the village he lives in and the book centres on his life there over the period of a year. Jason is a bright sensitive boy, who writes poetry in secret and suffers with a stammer. Jason is desperate to fit in at school and be a popular student but his stammer makes him an easy target for the school bullies. It is a sometimes painful account of male adolescence as Jason struggles to come to terms with everything that is going on his life; his poetry, the bullies, his parent’s relationship, girls, the Falklands War and gypsies.

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    Lindyloumac said on Aug 28, 2009 about the Paperback edition | Add your feedback

  • 1 person find this helpful

    I want to give this book 5 stars. Another tour de force from David Mitchell, my favourite writer.

    Black Swan Green is a journal-like narrative of Jason Taylor, a stammering 13-year old boy from Black Swan Green, a village in Worcestershire, the UK (at one point in the novel, Jason explained t ... (continue)

    I want to give this book 5 stars. Another tour de force from David Mitchell, my favourite writer.

    Black Swan Green is a journal-like narrative of Jason Taylor, a stammering 13-year old boy from Black Swan Green, a village in Worcestershire, the UK (at one point in the novel, Jason explained the difference between "stutter" and "stammer", which is hilarious". Charting 13 months from January 1982, the book is a nostalgic memoir of a middle-class boy in the Margaret Thatcher's era.

    Maybe because I also grew up in the 1980s, the story brought me many wonderful memories of the era, e.g. songs from Spandau Ballet and Duran Duran, the movies Superman II and Chariots of Fire, recording songs on TDK cassettes, recording TV shows on VHS/Beta etc. The descriptions of the Falkland Wars and the recession are also superb.

    I cannot believe Mitchell has written this when he is close to 40. The narrative really sounds like it came from a 13-year old boy. Mitchell has really put himself into the mind of a kid. He thinks and speaks like a boy, and that's marvellous. It's also very easy to read (I finished it on my flight back from New York).

    Extremely funny and enjoyable. Love it.

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    Tracy W said on May 25, 2008 about the Mass Market Paperback edition | Add your feedback

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