By the New York Times bestselling author of The Bone Clocks and
Cloud Atlas Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize
Selected by Time as One of the Ten Best Books of the Year A New
York Times Notable Book Named One of the Best Books of the Year by The
Washington Post Book World, The Christian Science Monitor, Rocky
Mountain News, and Kirkus Reviews A Los Angeles Times Book Prize
Finalist Winner of the ALA Alex Award Finalist for the Costa Novel
Award
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
"[David Mitchell has created] one of the most endearing, smart, and
funny young narrators ever to rise up from the pages of a novel. . . .
The always fresh and brilliant writing will carry readers back to their
own childhoods. . . . This enchanting novel makes us remember exactly
what it was like."--The Boston Globe
"[David Mitchell is a] prodigiously daring and imaginative young
writer. . . . As in the works of Thomas Pynchon and Herman Melville, one
feels the roof of the narrative lifted off and oneself in
thrall."--Time
