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Black Swan Green

By David Mitchell

(53)

| Paperback | 9780340822807

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Book Description

From highly acclaimed two-time Man Booker finalist David Mitchell comes a glorious, sinewy, meditative novel of boyhood on the cusp of adulthood and the old on the cusp of the new.

In his previous novels, David Mitchell dazzled us with his narrative scope and his virtuosic command of multiple Continue

From highly acclaimed two-time Man Booker finalist David Mitchell comes a glorious, sinewy, meditative novel of boyhood on the cusp of adulthood and the old on the cusp of the new.

In his previous novels, David Mitchell dazzled us with his narrative scope and his virtuosic command of multiple voices and stories. The New York Times Book Review said, "Mitchell is, clearly, a genius. He writes as though at the helm of some perpetual dream machine, can evidently do anything, and his ambition is written in magma across [Cloud Atlas's] every page."

Black Swan Green inverts the telescopic vision of Cloud Atlas to track a single year in what is, for 13-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982. But the 13 chapters create an exquisitely observed world that is anything but sleepy. Pointed, funny, profound, left field, elegiac, and painted with the stuff of life, Black Swan Green is David Mitchell's subtlest yet most accessible 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

6 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 | 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 | 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 about the Hardcover edition | 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 about the Hardcover edition | 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 | Add your feedback

  • 2 people find this helpful

    David Mitchell's follow-up to "Cloud Atlas" is a dark, intimate novel that remembers teenage humiliation and Thatcherite Britain.

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    ambient pleasures said on Sep 12, 2006 about the Hardcover edition | Add your feedback

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