Author(s): David Mitchell

Fiction

It's a dank January in the Worcestershire village of Black Swan Green and thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor -- covert stammerer and reluctant poet -- anticipates a stultifying year in the deadest village on Earth. But Jason hasn't reckoned with a junta of bullies, simmering family discord, the Falklands War, an exotic Belgian emigre, a threatened gypsy invasion and the caprices of those mysterious entities known as girls. BLACK SWAN GREEN charts thirteen months in the black hole between childhood and adolescence, set against the sunset of an agrarian England still overshadowed by the Cold War. Wry, painful, funny and vibrant with the stuff of life, it is David Mitchell's subtlest and most captivating achievement to date.

If you grew up in 1980s Britain (or even in Australia as the child of a 10-pound pom as I did) the characters, the setting and the language of Black Swan Green will be instantly recognisable to you. David Mitchell is one of my favourite authors (Cloud Atlas is one of his best known books) and this novel did not disappoint. Reading this book was like being able to revisit my old friend, Adrian Mole, but with a light shone into the shades of darkness of adolescence as a family sails into dysfunction and teenager, Jason Taylor, battles to find his way in the world. ->CAROLINE