Black Swan Green

Starred review from January 2, 2006
For his fourth novel, two-time Booker Prize finalist Mitchell (Cloud Atlas
, etc.) turns to material most writers plumb in their first: the semiautobiographical, first-person coming-of-age story. And after three books with notably complex narrative structure, far-flung settings, and multiple viewpoints, he has chosen one narrator, 13-year-old Jason Taylor, to tell the story of one year (1982) in one town, Worcestershire's Black Swan Green. Jason starts with the January day he accidentally smashes his late grandfather's irreplaceable Omega Seamaster DeVille watch and ends with Christmas, which, because of intervening events, becomes the last he spends in this sleepy Midlands hamlet. The gorgeously revealed cast includes Jason's brilliant older sister, sarcastic mother, blustering dad and a spectrum of bullies and mates. Jason's nemesis is an intermittent, fluctuating stammer: some days he must avoid words beginning with N; other days, S. Once he is exposed, the bullies taunt him mercilessly; there is no respite for the weak or disabled in Black Swan Green nor, as the realities of Thatcher's grim reign begin to take their toll, in England writ large. How Jason and his family navigate this year of change is the emotional core of this rich novel, but the virtuoso chapter is "The Bridle Path," wherein Jason, alone for one delicious day, searches for a tunnel fabled to have been dug by the Romans in order to rout the Vikings. What he finds along the way captures the sheer pleasure of being a boy and brings to mind adventures shared by Huck and Tom.

June 5, 2006
Any "whingers" out there won't feel comfortable in Mitchell's new novel of burgeoning and cruel adolescent boys in the rural but hardly pastoral England village of Black Swan Green. Heyborne, who performed one of the characters in the audiobook of Mitchell's Cloud Atlas
, embodies the voice of 13-year-old Jason Taylor to perfection. His timbre is youthful and a tad reluctant, as might be expected of a teenager with a stammer who wants desperately to fit in with his rowdy friends. Jason's friends sound too much like Jason himself, but since they are viewed from Jason's perspective and since boys in a clique do tend to sound alike, the choices Heyborne makes are not problematic. The 1980s Worcestershire slang is more challenging, however. The addition of the letter "y" to words to form adjectives is somewhat "educationy," but it is sometimes hard to work through regionalisms that one cannot see in order to place them better. Although Mitchell's novel doesn't lives up to Lord of the Flies
, which it derives from, Heyborne's performance is both compelling and compassionate, and the audio is entertaining and highly rewarding. Simultaneous release with the Random House hardcover (Reviews, Jan. 2).

Starred review from September 15, 2006
Mitchell, author of the amazingCloud Atlas, re-creates the parallel universe inhabited by a 13-year-old English boy in 1982. It's a world of superstition, misinformation, obsession with social status, the mystery of girls, popular songs, school, his family's increasing dysfunction, and dimly understood political upheaval. Mostly though, Jason Taylor struggles with his stammer (the hangman) and bullies. If they ever find out he writes poetry (as Eliot Bolivar), he'll just die. As in previous books, Mitchell's structure is a series of stories that add up to a novel. Recorded, some of the stories seem to end abruptly, but Kirby Heyborne's reading is a treat, never more so than when he tackles the accent of Madame Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck, an elderlyémigré who counsels Jason about his poetry, confronting him with a sophistication he can scarcely have imagined. From Jason's first cigarette to his first kiss, this novel finds the strange in the quotidian. The antique Brit slang delights as often as it baffles. Highly recommended as a great performance of one of the better novels of the year.John Hiett, Iowa City P.L.

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.