David Mitchell - Black Swan Green (2006)
Reviewed by Fiona Walker
Born in 1986, I can never really call myself an eighties child. But I was conscious of the tail end of them, and I was flooded with the detritus, the most enduring bits that stayed afloat around me as I was growing up. Which is why this book warms me to my centre. Rich with the details of a culture I don't remember grasping onto, but as a child growing, I most certainly did, Black Swan Green taps into a strange part of me, and causes the oddest warm, safe feelings.
This is the hope for every book: that it might reach into, into some place you don't quite know, and make something alert. Be it joy at Nabokov's aesthetic bliss, or the wonderful safe nostalgia that this book conjures, it rouses something. For me, anyway. Every reaction to the greatest books is personal, and makes reviews almost pointless. The things that matter can't be captured, and the things that can are largely entirely subjective.
The things that can be captured here? The fact that Mitchell's narrative is a series of vignettes. The fact that the month-by-month breakdown of Jason's 13th year means the story doesn't seem to have a full narrative arc, doesn't seem to flow. Stories start and stop, a month will end without resolution, a section will conclude when you want to know how things panned out, how things carried on. It's an unsatisfying way of story-telling, in some senses (especially if you think about it, as you definitely can, as just a device to serve Mitchell's last-line thesis "That's because it's not the end"). Or perhaps it's more accurate to say it's just not traditional.
I don't think it's that Mitchell can't write traditional story arcs of novel length, carry things through and make them flow, I think he doesn't want to. He does something more innovative and, yes, potentially less satisfying on a surface, "what happens next?" level. Instead, the 13 months connect; they throw grappling hooks out at odd intervals, little circles connect between them, resolutions are delayed, a sense of continuous life stretches on and back in the way Mitchell shows you how events dip out and crop up. It's incredibly clever, ingeniously structured.
I've had Cloud Atlas to read since 2004. I was daunted. Black Swan Green arrived: it seemed more traditional, more conventional, less experimental, so I decided it would be an easier place to start. I was probably right, but it's traditionality is just an illusion lent by it's subject matter. Narratively, it's probably just as complex and inter-connected as Cloud Atlas (from what I have read), but the coming-of-age story that's mapped onto it is more conventional, that's all.
Any impression of simplicity suggested by the fact that it's about a young boy growing up is mostly false. That's not to say it's complicated to read: it's a joy to read, all the little interconnected tricks are only there to spot if you want. If all you want from this is a rich coming of age novel, then it more than adequately provides that. I wanted to race ahead with it, swim forward on Mitchell's lucid prose, but I had to ration myself.
Another point? The fact that Mitchell never quite gets the 13 year-old-voice right. There's always a little niggling "wow, this guy's a little mature for 13 (12 as he starts off)", "wow, his thought-patterns are a bit... good." Mitchell tries to pass Jason's sometimes profound observations off with a degree of nonchalance, of false whimsy, to pass them off with gun-fire sentences (almost as if to suggest Jason isn't aware of the complex nature of a thought he's had), but it doesn't always sit quite right. It's all possible, that the kid's simply precocious, but it doesn't fully ring true (if Jason was 15, it would work).
Always the problem with this kind of novel, to get the voice and the inner thoughts right. Though even if there's occasionally a bit too much of the published novelist in Jason, it doesn't actually matter. It certainly didn't to me. It didn't bother me particularly, or spoil my enjoyment, it was just something I noticed.
Other than that, Mitchell doesn't put a foot wrong. His prose is effortless and a joy to read. He captures the world of a 13 year old brilliantly. Jason's perfectly believable toying with language is wonderful, and so is his eclectic style (whether it's believably that of a 13 year old or not). The little tales contained within have touches of magic to them, and they are all great to read, each little moment from Jason's life.
The characters are presented excellently (particularly Jason's mother and father; their over-arching story, the sky to Jason's life, is teased out brilliantly over the course of the book). The cultural references are all there, all correct (the games, the music, the television, the style, the social history; everything), all setting little happy bells ringing in me. And though it's rich with a particular culture, it doesn't ground the story so it's too concrete, it still has the freedom of the feeling that it could be set in any decade.
It's nostalgic, it's warm, it's clever but it's also a beautifully simple story of growing up. These 13 turbulent months of Jason's childhood are given wonderfully. I recommend this so highly. There are moments of poignancy when Mitchell knows just when to the right tragic note, but over, reading this book made me very happy. And that's enough.
Posted by Fiona Walker in Book Reviews | Permalink
