Critical Mick

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Reviews by the Clown that All Other Critics Want to Strangle with a Black Turtleneck

Black Swan Green
by David Mitchell
Sceptre, 2007

Just Finished!

Clondalkin-based author and poet Colm Keegan was recommending David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas to me since our very first meeting. Cloud Atlas was short-listed for the 2004 Booker Prize, as was Mitchell's 2001 novel number9dream. Though Black Swan Green only impressed the Booker judges enough for their 2006 long list, I wanted to dive into a novel that I had not heard a word about. So without hearing a review, summary or marketing blurb from the back cover, down into the village of Black Swan Green I swooped.

I recommend that you do the same.

Don't be put off should anyone compare David Mitchell's narrator to Adrian Mole. Both are aspiring poets at thriteen years old making observations on England in the early 1980's. Both fear a bully, fancy a girl, approach social issues, and observe their parents' martial difficulties. Both have the power to make readers laugh. Adrian Mole is a children's book. Black Swan Green is a tale of maturity. This brings the truth and power of Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha into an time that I did not realize how well I remembered until seeing afresh.

David Mitchell has captured EXACTLY what it feels like to be thriteen years old.

He has also captured exactly what it is like to be thirteen in an average corner of England in the bleak year of 1982. Do not assume that your knowledge of England or the English is accurate until you have read Black Swan Green.

The only possible nit I can pick is that Mitchell pushed the setting too hard. The fictional Black Swan Green is in the shadow of the Malvern Hills and the paper that young boys aspire to be lauded as heroes in is the Malvern Gazette. It does not need to be restated that the story takes place near the town of Malvern. And yes, it's 1982. A few mentions of fashions, songs, and world events would conjure memory and nostalgia. Though a lighter touch than Philip Kerr was with The Shot, David Mitchell pressed into the narratve of his fine novel one Rubik's Cube and Talking Head tune too many.

Critical Mick says: Damn.

And the talented bastard is the same age as me!!! Green is the color of envy.

David Mitchell's Black Swan Green is one of the best books I have read in 2008. It is one of the best I have read in any year.

Yo! This review and all content on the DFA Guide site are copyright 2008 Mick Halpin. All links to other sites and documents are copyright to whatever source wrote something cool enough for Mick to give it a referral. Try to claim them as your own work and bad karma will catch up with you, baby. Believe it.

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This Page Was Last Updated On 30 March, 2008.