Black Swan Green - David Mitchell

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.

I love David Mitchell. It's just a fact. Every book of his I read reminds me of that with every word. I picked up Black Swan Green a few nights ago and within a paragraph I thought to myself, 'Why do I read anything by anyone else?' So if you can't tell already, this review is going to be oh so ridiculously positive.

David Mitchell is better known for Cloud Atlas, a remarkable novel fractured into pieces and told from many different points of view. The other novel I've read by him, Ghostwritten, was similar in that it was many different stories put together to form one idea. I fell in love with both of them pretty much immediately which is why it took me a bit to actually read Black Swan Green as it was so different from his two previous novels.

Black Swan Green tells the story of Jason Taylor, a thirteen year old boy growing up in small town England in the early eighties. Each chapter covers a day or two in each month, illustrating different facets in Jason's life and showing a slowly creeping narrative of families, friendships and growth. I was captivated.

Jason is our narrator and an inspired voice it is. Jason is just discovering many things but he has a poetic mind, always fronting but incredibly naive, instantly recognizable to anyone who's ever been thirteen. His voice is easy to fall into and definitely unique, calling to mind childhood and curiosity. His relationships with his friends (and enemies), his parents and just people he meets in the town drive this novel and you find yourself always rooting for him, despite some of the stupid things he does. Deep down, though, he's a great kid that just wants to do the right thing and completely lovable.

Something Mitchell does quite regularly is involve characters from his other novels into new stories. Although I experienced this in Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas, I was not expecting it in Black Swan Green. However, in one of the chapters, Jason gets some tutelage from an elderly woman who some might remember as a young girl in Cloud Atlas. I was thrilled when I put two and two together and it added a whole new dimension to that chapter. Whereas normal readers of the book would have completely enjoyed it regardless, readers who had read his earlier work would have gotten an extra layer of meaning from some of the conversations and that is why I call Mitchell a genius.

Each chapter could be a short story on its own but together they form a lovely mosaic of a young life. Personally, I think everyone should read at least one Mitchell in their lifetime (which hopefully will convince them to read more) and if you're not big on fractured narratives or science fiction, than this one is probably for you. Instantly relatable, painfully real, Black Swan Green is absolutely stupendous. Take a trip down to your local bookstore and treat yourself.

Ghostwritten - David Mitchell

After reading (and falling in love with) Cloud Atlas earlier this year, I definitely wanted to read another David Mitchell book and see what he could do in other stories. I had bought myself Ghostwritten when I finished my dissertation and hadn't sat down to read it yet. As I'm moving soon and trying to get rid of a lot of my books, I decided to start it.

Ghostwritten, much like Cloud Atlas, is written in sections. Each section is a different area of the globe and a different character. Sometimes the section is only one day in their life and sometimes it's whole months following them. Each character is a unique voice and each has something a bit strange going on. Sometimes there's a ghost involved, a noncorpus, a dopelganger. Sometimes there's something a bit technological like the Zookeeper and sometimes there's just a doomsday cult. Each of these characters is just living his or her own life in a world populated by the others but through Mitchell's prose, you see how each of them, despite being worlds away and incredibly different, impact each other. 

I devoured this book. I was just completely taken aback by how good it is. I like this idea of cutting a book into sections and then using each section as a way to make an individual work that will play into the whole. Cloud Atlas did this with time and Ghostwritten does this with place. You are very aware that things are happening at different ends of the globe, in differing levels of schooling, poverty and success. Still, somehow, each characters' choices and actions impact each other to an astounding degree. 

Another thing I loved was the fact that Ghostwritten seems to take place in the same world as Cloud Atlas. There are characters from CA that show up in Ghostwritten as side characters. I really appreciated that and there were even hints in Ghostwritten towards events that would happen in Cloud Atlas. Although these books were written years apart, I love the idea that Mitchell created characters he liked and them kept them, exploring their lives in later books. 

Beyond his character creation and lovely fluidity of plot, Mitchell is also a great wordsmith. He can describe things in a way that makes them real and immediate. I particularly love a passage where he describes the different London tube lines as different personalities. He says, "The Victoria Line for example, breezy and reliable. The Jubilee Line, the young disappointment of the family, branching out to the suburbs, eternally  having extensions planned, twisting round to Greenwich, and back under the river out east somewhere. The District and Circle Line, well, even Death would rather fork out for a taxi if he's in a hurry."It's just one of those things where you read, think 'yes', and move on with a smile on your face. 

I absolutely adored Ghostwritten and think you should definitely give it a try. I want to read everything Mitchell's ever written now. I'm quite the fan.

Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

When the trailer for the new movie Cloud Atlas was released about a month ago, everyone was horribly confused. Just what was this movie actually about? I didn't watch the trailer myself, still not quite sure why, but was very aware of the confusion surrounding it. That's why, when I was at the library next and saw it sitting on the shelf, I decided to pick it up and give it a go. Surely, if I could read the book, then I would understand the movie and see just what all these people were talking about. And it was shortlisted for the Booker the year it came out so it must be good, right?

I don't even really know how to describe the plot of Cloud Atlas. It's a series of separate narratives, all taking place in very different places and times. The book opens with the diary of a solicitor from San Francisco, on his way home from New Zealand in the late 19th century. His story ends midway through (as, indeed, all the stories will, although this one does end mid sentence), and you find yourself reading a set of letters from one dear friend to another, detailing the exploits of one Robert Frobisher, a young composer living his life quite extravagantly and dangerously in Belguim in-between the world wars.

The story turns from Frobisher to Louisa Rey, an investigative reporter in California in the seventies. Her story reads like a crime thriller, with short chapters and explosive cliffhangers. On one such cliffhanger, the story then switches to the tale of an elderly publisher, who's just lucked out on his latest autobiography becoming a best seller due to a rather elaborate stunt pulled by the author. Just as he's living the high life, however, he has to go on the run due to some thugs trying to hustle themselves into a share of the profits.

Things become a little strange (not that they weren't before but still) with the next story, the futuristic The Orison of Somni-451. This story is about, essentially, a clone worker who slowly begins to realize that she's more than what she's supposed to be. Each of the stories is amazing in its own right but Somni-451 is astounding, in my opinion. It's a real science fiction masterpiece, within an amazing novel of its own.

Lastly, you reach the center of the book with a post-apocalyptic tale of a young goatherd whose family ends up taking in a stranger who wants to learn more about their tribe. This story, quite different from the rest, continues on longer as, in the center of the book, it is not divided in half. The reader follows Zack and while reading this bit, I think this is where the novel really begins to gel. The story is told and slowly, in reverse order, you begin to read the second half of each of the earlier narratives. And that's when it hits you: this book is spectacular.

I stayed up until 3:30 in the morning to finish this novel and then spent the next hour looking up things about it and writing friends to pick it up. I just honestly think it's amazing. It takes six very different characters, six very different writing styles, six very different plots to tell a story about the human spirit and the triumphs and failures of power. There are small connections woven throughout the stories that tie them together but even without those, the general theme shines through without much work. The characters speak for themselves and no amount of author gibberish clogs the main message.

This is one of those books that you finish and then sit in awe for awhile, not even entirely sure what to do with yourself anymore. It hangs over you like a benevolent cloud and all you can think is, when am I going to read another book that good? 

If you're a fan of epistolary novels, diary novels, crime thrillers, science fiction, bumbling old british men, post-apocalyptic fiction, interwoven morals or just books in general, this is the book for you. I really encourage you to give it a try. It's definitely worth it.