num_pages: 371
description: From highly acclaimed two-time Man Booker finalist David Mitchell comes a glorious, sinewy, meditative novel of boyhood on the cusp of adulthood and the old on the cusp of the new.In his previous novels, David Mitchell dazzled us with his narrative scope and his virtuosic command ofmultiple voices and stories. The New York Times Book Review said, â€œMitchell is, clearly, a genius. He writes as though at the helm of some perpetual dream machine, can evidently do anything, and his ambition is written in magma across [ Cloud Atlas â€™s] every page.â€Black Swan Green inverts the telescopic vision of Cloud Atlas to track a single year in what is, for 13-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982. But the 13 chapters create an exquisitely observed world that is anything but sleepy. Pointed, funny, profound, left field, elegiac, and painted with the stuff of life, Black Swan Green is David Mitchellâ€™s subtlest yet most accessible achievement to date.Excerpt from Black Swan Green :Picked-on kids act invisible to reduce the chances of being noticed and picked on. Stammerers act invisible to reduce the chances of being made to say something we canâ€™t. Kids whose parents argue act invisible in case we trigger another skirmish. The Triple Invisible Boy, thatâ€™s Jason Taylor. Even I donâ€™t see the real Jason Taylor much these days, â€™cept for when weâ€™re writing a poem, or occasionally in a mirror, or just before sleep. But he comes out in woods. Ankley branches, knuckly roots, paths that only might be, earthworks by badgers or Romans, a pond thatâ€™ll ice over come January, a wooden cigar box nailed behind the ear of a secret sycamore where we once planned a treehouse, birdstuffedtwigsnapped silence, toothy bracken, and places you canâ€™t find if youâ€™re not alone. Time in woodsâ€™s older than time in clocks, and truer.
language: English
title: Black Swan Green
titlecomplete: Black Swan Green
characters: Mark Badbury, Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck, Hugo Lamb, Jason Taylor
genres: Fiction, Coming Of Age, British Literature, Young Adult, Literature, Novels, Contemporary, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Audiobook
ratings_count: 41544
places: Worcestershire, England
awards: awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Booker Prize
category: Longlist, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Costa Book Award
category: Novel, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: Los Angeles Times Book Prize
category: Fiction, awardedAt: 1167638400000
name: ALA Alex Award
publisher: Knv Open Market Editions