Synopses & Reviews
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 Atlass] 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 Mitchells subtlest yet most accessible achievement to date.
Excerpt from Black Swan Green:
Picked-on kids act invisible to reduce the chances of being noticed and picked on. Stammerers act invisible to reduce the chances of being made to say something we cant. Kids whose parents argue act invisible in case we trigger another skirmish. The Triple Invisible Boy, thats Jason Taylor. Even I dont see the real Jason Taylor much these days, cept for when were writing a poem, or occasionally in a mirror, or just before sleep. But he comes out in woods. Ankley branches, knuckly roots, paths that only might be, earthworks by badgers or Romans, a pond thatll ice over come January, a wooden cigar box nailed behind the ear of a secret sycamore where we once planned a treehouse, birdstuffedtwigsnapped silence, toothy bracken, and places you cant find if youre not alone. Time in woodss older than time in clocks, and truer.
About the Author
David Mitchell is the acclaimed author of the novels Cloud Atlas, which was a Man Booker Prize finalist; Number9Dream, which was short-listed for the Man Booker as well as the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; and Ghostwritten, awarded the Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for best book by a writer under thirty-five and short-listed for the Guardian First Book Award. In 2003, David Mitchell was selected as one of the Best of Young British Novelists by Granta. He now lives in Ireland.
From the Hardcover edition.