I loved this book! While I was never a teenage boy and my life never had nearly this much drama when I was a kid, I could still definitely relate to a lot of it. I'm amazed by how well the author remembers what it was like to be 13. His narrator was totally believable. And a lot of the writing was absolutely beautiful. "If swans weren't real, myths'd make them up." Plus, reading all that British 80's slang makes me want to talk nonsense words and pretend they mean something! ( )

During his lunch break, a co-worker went into the bookstore by our office. There, in the bargain section, was a stack of Black Swan Green, one of his favorite books. For whatever reason, no book lover likes to see one of their favorites in the bargain section. Sure, it's probably just the product of an overzealous print-run, but if I found something meaningful in that book, then I would tend to think it's being undervalued, and perhaps even tainted by the scarlet sticker emblazoned on its cover. Rather than leave them there to be passed over by those who didn't realize they were walking past a true gem, my co-worker bought them. All. The whole pile of approximately twenty copies. He brought them back to work and started passing them out to anyone who he knew enjoyed reading. His sole caveat was that if you didn't think it would be your cup of tea, pass it along to someone else. The warm and fuzzy feeling elicited by this display of loyalty to a book meant that I simply dove into Black Swan Green, confident that here, I would find an excellent novel.

Black Swan Green is composed of thirteen chapters that chart thirteen months in the life of a thirteen year old boy. Jason Taylor is growing up in the English town of Black Swan Green (located in Worchestershire, which is "somewhere in the middle") in 1982. For England at large, that means Maggie Thatcher, the end of the Cold War, recession, and the Falklands War. For Jason Taylor, it means those things, but they tend to serve as background to his life spent navigating the complicated adolescent world of school, bullies, girls, secret clubs, bickering parents, and speech therapy.

It should come as no surprise that Black Swan Green is semi-autobiographical. Some critics have grumbled about this fact, saying that it restricted Mitchell's movements when he normally plays much more with form in his other work. The novel frames a little over a year in Jason's life, resulting in the fact that there isn't a single narrative arch to the novel. Instead, it could be taken as thirteen short stories, each highlighting an encounter or an experience that the reader can see will help shape his life and his character. Mitchell is then free to linger over details and characters, evoking a sense of what one really remembers about growing up. After reading this, I feel as though I've been given a very intimate glance into Mitchell's life. It went beyond the facts and illuminated the core of what it means to be on the cusp of adulthood, no longer a child but not quite a man. Black Swan Green might not have had a fancy literary format, meant to impress and surprise, but I was certainly dazzled with its quiet beauty and truth. It was quite a bargain indeed. ( )

Black Swan Green by David Mitchell is a beautifully written novel that captures the difficulty of growing up while delivering a unique view of family and society in England circa 1982.

I’d read a number of negative reviews prior to reading Black Swan Green. Many readers seemed unwilling to stray from Mitchell’s multi-narrative structure (as seen in Cloud Atlas and Ghostwritten) or couldn’t relate to Jason Taylor, the 13 year old stammering protagonist.

To those naysayers I say this: you are wrong.

Read my full review on the Used Books Blog:
http://usedbooksblog.com/blog/black-s... ( )

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 pseudonym, fighting a stammer that threatens to make his life a misery, dealing with family tensions and learning a whole lot about himself and others on the way.

I loved the way that the book is written as though the 13 year old boy is writing it. Albeit a talented 13 year old boy, with some very creative use of metaphor - but even here, the writing is deliberately a little overdone to maintain that feeling of youth in the writing.

The author goes to great lengths to fasten the narrative to the year of 1983 - in fact here he does overdo it. Things a 13 year old at the time would take for granted are repeatedly spelled out, so that you feel the author is trying to remind us all the time of the year. But that is a minor criticism for a book that skillfully delves into the life of a 13 year old boy, and makes you remember what it was like - the good an the bad.

This book has hidden depths too. It explores some difficult themes, expertly dancing through them, masterfully pulling the threads together into a whole that is so much more than the sum of its parts.

Highly recommended. ( )

Is it OK to admit that I've not really got David Mitchell before. I plodded through number9dream without enjoying it, and had to miss some of the chapters to get through Cloud Atlas. This, though, I really adored, a wonderfully nostalgic (but not in a bad way) simply told story of childhood, or rather thirteen months of it for a stammering boy in Black Green Swan. You get tales of failure, humiliation, that weirdness that only exists in childhood imagination, but overall, an underlying feel good story, one of triumph (if only in small way) of the underdog. Recommended. ( )