Rating: Three Books
Our discussion of David Mitchell’s “Black Swan Green” concluded without a group rating. It’s only the second book to be “reviewed” on our blog, so I will try to live up to the standard set by Ang with the Helprin review.
The rating is based on our loved it / hated it conversation.
The rating is based on our loved it / hated it conversation.
The story of Jason Taylor, the stammering thirteen year old poetry writing Brit, unfolds in thirteen chapters as thirteen months of his life. Each chapter is a complete short story narrated by Jason, interweaving characters that come and go from month to month. This may be one reason the story often felt disjointed. The universal struggles of the teenage experience are contrasted with the seismic shifts in his parents’ life and the larger conflicts around him socially and politically.
But ultimately, Black Swan Green is a novel about secrets: the secrets Jason tries to keep from his peers, the secrets his sister, mother and father keep from him. All of these secrets tug and pull the narrative, they want to escape the constructs of Black Swan Green, to break the surface so expertly created by Mitchell, and nothing can remain hidden, especially in an unsophisticated English village. The tautness created here is wholly tangible:
“Secrets affect you more than you’d think. You lie to keep them hidden. You steer talk away from them. You worry someone’ll discover yours and tell the world. You think you are in charge of the secret, but isn’t it the secret that’s using you?” (Pg 346). (readysteadybook.com)
At times I couldn’t connect with the story. However, I was often transported by David Mitchell to a place where I was reminded of other characters I have loved…Holden, Owen and Oscar.
