Black Swan Green : Amazon.co.uk: David Mitchell: Books

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"* 'His wildest ride yet... a singular achievement, from an author of extraordinary ambition and skill' - Independent on Sunday on CLOUD ATLAS * 'Exceptional... clever, unusual, gripping and beautifully written' - Literary Review on NUMBER9DREAM * 'The best first novel I have read in ages... [it] beguiles, informs, shocks and captivates.' - William Boyd, Daily Telegraph Books of the Year on GHOSTWRITTEN"

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'David Mitchell is dizzyingly, dazzlingly good...Black Swan Green is just gorgeous'

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84 Reviews

5 star:		(39)
4 star:		(31)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(6)
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4.2 out of 5 stars (84 customer reviews)

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48 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Black Swan Green, 19 Aug 2006

By	David Hickie (Dublin, Ireland) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Anyone who is a fan of David Mitchell (and even those who have not read him) will love this book. However, don't expect the style of his previous books: Number 9 Dream, Cloud Atlas and Ghostwritten. This is the story of a year in the rather eventful life of Jason Taylor, a boy of 13 growing up in a village called Black Swan Green, Worcestershire, in the early 1980s. Jason, apart from being quite a normal 13 year old, is a stammerer who tries desperately hard to hide his 'secret' from the rest of his schoolmates. His story of his experiences at school is one that anyone who was a teenager can identify with: how he sees his parents, the teachers, bullies, and those strange creatures called girls. But what makes this teenage narrative come alive, what makes you feel like you are there with Jason Taylor is the often brutal honesty with which he tells his truth. He says all the things you thought about as a teenager growing up but didn't dare to articulate. Mitchell also manages to evoke a nostalgia for the 1980s, and his detailing is superb. You remember how you or your parents or friends felt during the recession, or the public mood during the Falklands War. And there is also a nice touch where Mitchell quite unexpectedly introduces a character from one of his stories in Cloud Atlas.

The English countryside and village life is portrayed without the slightest hint of romanticism. A teenage boy doesn't see life like that. This is life in the raw. Jason sees the often brutal contests between boys to establish a pecking order, he is afraid of being ridiculed or beaten up after school, he worries about his status among the rest of the kids and he wonders if he will ever have a girlfriend. Life for young Jason Taylor is very serious indeed. In Black Swan Green, Mitchell makes a rather unpromising subject tense and fascinating. And it's a real pageturner -- you just have to know what happens next. Just buy this book!

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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Pure reading pleasure, 27 May 2007

By	Redeye (England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Black Swan Green (Paperback)

David Mitchell deserves awards for his writing because he must be the finest author around. Black Swan Green takes you through a year in the life of thirteen-year-old boy in a typical English village in 1982. His references to events of the time, in particular the Falklands War take you back as you read. It does help that Jason Taylor is a very likeable, intelligent and yet vulnerable boy, being afflicted with a stammer, and the book is very painful to read at times as he suffers that most bleak and hurtful thing, bullying. I'd recently read Cloud Atlas which was a brilliant but quite difficult read and I knew this book was a lot easier but I was surprised that he even linked this book to Cloud Atlas through the amazing and surreal Madame Crommelynck daughter of Vyvyan Ayrs and who was the unrequited love of the tragic Robert Frobisher. Overall this book is an absolute 'must' read, as good as 'Catcher in the Rye'.

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20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nearly a triumph , 30 Aug 2007

By	A. J. King "ajking22" (UK) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Black Swan Green (Paperback)

Not quite an unqualified eulogy from me although I enjoyed reading it immensely hence the 4 stars. Mitchell sets out to convince us this is 1982 by loading the period references to an alarming - even excessive - degree; typically no opportunity is passed to give precise details of a meal, pop tune, clothes or whatever in order to re-emphasise that this is 1982, and this occasionally leads to clunky dialogue or stilted prose, eg when an adult refers laboriously to "Kay's Catalogues in Worcester" (a person would simply have referred to "Kays") or when Jason himself points out that the sweets from the jar in the shop come served up in paper bags (as they always were back then - in 1982 you wouldn't think to point it out). The artificial overloading of period data inevitably leads to the occasional factual error, which also grates with a reader if he or she happens to spot them. One or two other plot devices fail - we know the young sailor is serving on HMS Coventry so we can guess immediately what his fate will be. I felt he could have been put on a lesser known ship with more devastating impact (Who remembers now the ships that took hits and casualties but were not lost, like HMS Glamorgan?) The scene in which the young sailor had nightmares about combat before the Task Force was even dreamt about were overdramatised and silly - until the actual conflict and the inevitability of combat loomed he would have had no more fear of the terror of war than his former schoolfriends - The navy was just about the safest place to be until May 1982. A fact that annoys revisionist historians and some authors is that back in 1982 support for the Task Force (and for Margaret Thatcher) was extremely high - but most adults in the story here regard her as a warmonger and a barbarian and only the kids are excited by the news footage. Thatcher may have been reviled elsewhere but in Middle England where this story is set she was Brittania personified.
Having said all this what works so well about this book and what ultimately redeems it is the beautifully observed capture of the politics and issues of a young adolescent boy at school and of a middle class family in turmoil - things which paradoxically have hardly changed at all in the intervening 25 years. I'd recommend this book.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars A pure delight
I started reading David Mitchell's novels with Cloud Atlas, which I enjoyed but not as much as I'd expected and found it hard work at times. Read more

Published 1 month ago by French reader

5.0 out of 5 stars Maggot, Unborn Twin and Hangman
Jason Taylor lives in Black Swan Green and attends the local comprehensive. He is thirteen when the novel begins and it's Christmas, just before the Falklands War. Read more

Published 1 month ago by E. Shaw

5.0 out of 5 stars A Crispy Pancake Anyone?
Probably up there with 'on the black hill' and 'a month in the country' as one of these quintessential British novels. Read more

Published 2 months ago by Mr. Alan F. Hill

4.0 out of 5 stars Evocative novel of early adolescence
Wonderful if slightly uneasy - brought back some of the miseries of this stage of life vividly. I didn't enjoy being thirteen much, even though it wasn't as awful for me as it was... Read more

Published 3 months ago by Jezza

5.0 out of 5 stars 'A True Masterpiece'
David Mitchell is owed mounds of praise from this book as it is a true masterpiece. Gripping me from page one, Black Swan Green is a rare beauty. Read more

Published 4 months ago by Ms. E. J. Rickard

3.0 out of 5 stars White Duck Park
As a fan of David Mitchell's previous books "Cloud Atlas", and "Number9Dream" ( I have not read "Ghostwritten" yet) I was pleased when my book group chose this. Read more

Published 4 months ago by hellonikie

4.0 out of 5 stars Inside the head of a teenager
This book follows the progressing adolescence of a teenage boy with a stammer, growing up in middle England during the Thatcher years; intelligent but socially clumsy and an easy... Read more

Published 4 months ago by J. I. G. Buttle

4.0 out of 5 stars Captivating
I was prompted to read this book by a fellow reviewer of Joe Dunthorne's 'Submarine' (also stunning), as a superior example of a narrative told the eyes of a teenage boy. Read more

Published 5 months ago by Lynne Barrett-lee

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful and profound book engagingly written
This is a wonderful and well written book following the life of a 13 year old boy in 1983 living in a Worcestershire village called Black Swan Green, writing poetry under a... Read more

Published 5 months ago by Sir Furboy

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing
Uneventful story of a 13 year old with 80s nostalgia aplenty. Every brand mentioned, all chapters could be skipped and the result is just irritating. Read more

Published 7 months ago by R. Rosini

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