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- Format: Hardcover, 304 pages
- Publisher: Random House
- On Sale: April 11, 2006
- Price: $23.95
- ISBN: 978-1-4000-6379-6 (1-4000-6379-5)
about this book
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 Green 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.
Praise for Black Swan Green
"Great Britain's Catcher in the Rye—and another triumph for one of the present age's most interesting and accomplished novelists."
—Kirkus (starred review)
"On the heels of his critically acclaimed Cloud Atlas (2004), frequent Booker Prize nominee Mitchell has left behind complicated literary constructions for this beautiful, stripped-down, coming-of-age story. . . [I]t is Mitchell’s brilliant ability to reproduce internal monologue that makes this story so mesmerizing. He reproduces Jason’s inner life with such astonishing verisimilitude that readers will find themselves haunted by him long after turning the last page."
—Booklist (starred review)
"Mitchell is one of our great writers; you sit wide-eyed in your armchair, amazed at what he can do. With Black Swan Green, he's quietly conjured an imp: that sense, in boyhood, of ordinary life about to become an adventure."
—Andrew Sean Greer, author of The Confessions of Max Tivoli
"David Mitchell continues to surprise me with his virtuosity and humanity. Black Swan Green is his most accomplished and accessible book to date. If you read one British novel this year, please make it this one."
—Gary Shteyngart, author of The Russian Debutante's Handbook and Absurdistan
"[Black Swan Green] captures the sheer pleasure of being a boy and brings to mind adventures shared by Huck and Tom."
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"What makes [David Mitchell] noteworthy is that each of his books seems entirely different from that which preceded it. Black Swan Green announces itself as a reasonably recognizable story of boyhood and adolescence; in Mitchell's inventive hands, it is sure to be anything but standard."
—The Guardian (UK)
