Skip to main content

Black Swan Green by David Mitchell : A year in the life of a thirteen year old


Black Swan Green is a year in the life of thirteen year old stammering Jason Taylor in the small town of Black Swan Green. David Mitchell assumes his voice with amazing deftness and skill.
What he does really well is immerse the reader in Jason's world. The narration, the voice is spot on. The characters are brought to life. The setting of Black Swan Green is brilliant. Two characters from Cloud Atlas make an appearance and all of it leads to a surprisingly cohesive whole that is much greater than the sum of his parts. A lot of novels with kids as protagonists are written but this is by far the best I have read. Its loads better than what they call Young Adult fiction and indeed I would  rate it above A Catcher in the Rye.
Its not a novel light on subject matter, gypsies come into the picture at one stage and the unrest they cause in Black Swan Green is vividly rendered. Weighty matters are dealt with, without even once losing the narrator's voice.
Looking back at his other novels this is probably his simplest one in terms of structure and plot with no interleaving strands or overarching themes but that does not diminish Black Swan Green. This is easily his most heartfelt novel and he manages to lend a touch of magic even to the most mundane of activities. 
This is a great addition to David Mitchell's ouvre and he really is a fine writer with a gift for storytelling and turning out sentences that stick with you long after the book is closed.

You can buy Black Swan Green here.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Murgi’s fun facts

This one goes out to Mrigank Gupta aka Murgi. Murgi is such an awesome dude that even Chuck Norris and Rajnikanth can’t hold a candle to him. Below are Some facts that are indeed facts When Murgi was an infant he changed his own diapers Murgi was born toilet trained Murgi is actually the eldest in his house. He let the others enter this world before him When Murgi was born he got his own birth certificate from the doctor’s office Murgi never sits idle. He is just pretending to be like us Murgi never listens to excuses on the phone. He simply tells you what to do and disconnects. When Murgi will finally take a vacation the world will stop spinning While Chuck Norris counted to infinity twice, Murgi had already finished counting thrice and was solving everyone else's problems. Natural selection does not apply to Murgi. (Courtesy Ikka) Murgi caught an electron at rest.(Courtesy Ikka) When Arthur Eddington was asked if he really believed there were just three peop...
30 comments
Read more

Places to eat in Kanpur

Our real exploration of Kanpur began in our 5th year when we had our stipend to spend so hopefully this article will prove helpful to all the foodies out there. Surprisingly(and I really mean this) there are a number of terrific places to eat in Kanpur. Hopefully this article will prove helpful to many who are looking forward to spend their stipends. By far the best way to reach places to eat in Kanpur is to catch the bus that the institute provides. The bus runs everyday(except Sunday) at 8:00 pm and 9:00 pm. The bus returns at around 10:15 pm. Murgi(Our food and snacks Coordinator, every wing should have one) always takes the phone number of the conductor so that he can stay updated about where the bus is and so that the return is convenient. The bus service is really a life saver and unless you have a bike should be the first option. It is also better to roam during weekdays than weekends simply because there is lesser ruckus everywhere. Going to a restaurant on a weekend is an ab...
19 comments
Read more

The travails of a frustrated compiler

I was thinking about what would happen in case a compiler becomes sentient. Rather than just translating code it would be able to understand things but I suppose because the programs are written by humans are so often wrong the best part would be the error messages. Here are a few I could think of "Hello World again and again. Do you know how many times I have had to print that bloody nonsense. You can do anything else, print your name for gods sake but it always has to Hello fucking World." "Look Lad, not so fast, take a step back, a deep breath and your fingers away from the keyboard, and now think for a second" "Son, you have been trying to do this for an hour now. Honestly speaking you are not cut out to be a programmer. I would suggest you look for the nearest river or the tallest building or best of all find something you are better at" "Does any decent person code at this time in the morning. How would you feel if I dragged you out of your slee...
6 comments
Read more