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A review by da_bos
Black Swan Green by David Mitchell
4.0
I wasn't thirteen in 1982 and didn't have a stammer. And I didn't grow up in Britain, obviously. But as I was reading Black Swan Green, I couldn't help but feel that I knew Jason Taylor only too well -- in a lot of ways, he is me when I was that age. Perhaps that's the main reason why I really enjoyed Black Swan Green. Yet the novel has many other qualities, too: It has a well-conceived plot that leaves you satisfied with what happens without feeling you already knew pages in advance that this was what was going to happen. It has well-drawn characters that appear realistic and multilayered. And it is composed in beautiful prose without coming across unnecessarily "artsy."
That said, Black Swan Green is a classic coming-of-age story, a Bildungsroman, as the Germans would say. It follows the conventions of the genre (except perhaps for the ending), and it does so well. But coming-of-age stories are not necessarily everyone's favorite, so if you are not fond of this kind of story, you may want to stay away from it and read something else by David Mitchell (although, since since was the first and so far only of his books I've read, I wouldn't know which to recommend; I've only heard they're good). If you are, like me, open to the genre, you should give Black Swan Green a closer look.
That said, Black Swan Green is a classic coming-of-age story, a Bildungsroman, as the Germans would say. It follows the conventions of the genre (except perhaps for the ending), and it does so well. But coming-of-age stories are not necessarily everyone's favorite, so if you are not fond of this kind of story, you may want to stay away from it and read something else by David Mitchell (although, since since was the first and so far only of his books I've read, I wouldn't know which to recommend; I've only heard they're good). If you are, like me, open to the genre, you should give Black Swan Green a closer look.