num_pages: 304
description: From award-winning writer David Mitchell comes a sinewy, meditative novel of boyhood on the cusp of adulthood and the old on the cusp of the new.Black Swan Green tracks a single year in what is, for thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982. But the thirteen chapters, each a short story in its own right, create an exquisitely observed world that is anything but sleepy. A world of Kissingeresque realpolitik enacted in boys’ games on a frozen lake; of “nightcreeping” through the summer backyards of strangers; of the tabloid-fueled thrills of the Falklands War and its human toll; of the cruel, luscious Dawn Madden and her power-hungry boyfriend, Ross Wilcox; of a certain Madame Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck, an elderly bohemian emigré who is both more and less than she appears; of Jason’s search to replace his dead grandfather’s irreplaceable smashed watch before the crime is discovered; of first cigarettes, first kisses, first Duran Duran LPs, and first deaths; of Margaret Thatcher’s recession; of Gypsies camping in the woods and the hysteria they inspire; and, even closer to home, of a slow-motion divorce in four seasons.Pointed, funny, profound, left-field, elegiac, and painted with the stuff of life, Black Swan Green is David Mitchell’s subtlest and most effective achievement to date.
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: 41546
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: Vintage Canada