rebecca LANDO

Black Swan Green by David Mitchell

The moment I finished reading this, I flipped right back to the beginning and started again. Well, ‘flipped’ is the wrong word; I read it on the Kindle, so really, I clicked back.

I don’t know if it’s a Kindle thing or simply that the few books I’ve read this year have all been excellent, but I’ve been doing that consistently: taking a moment or two to think about the book after the last sentence, then starting the story anew.

I think Black Swan Green would be an instant-repeat either way. It’s the most resonant, lifelike, and quietly, normal-ly poignant story of adolescence I can recall reading. Which is saying a lot, I think, since the story is told by a 13-year-old stuttery British boy in Worcester in 1982, and I’m a 27-year-old American woman in Brooklyn in 2010 who is maybe very shy and perhaps slightly right-left dyslexic but not enough to matter. The writing in Black Swan Green is poetic and beautiful without ever being saccharine, bloated, or distracting and the world through Jason Taylor’s eyes is as muddy and chaotic as real life, but clearer through his thoughtfulness. At times the period references are too on-the-nose but never enough to distract you from the story. And this is, for me, the rare book about a fictional writer where I’d actually like to see the fake-author (Jason Taylor)’s poems, which Mitchell is far too smart and respectful of Taylor and the reader to ever put in.