Black Swan Green - David Mitchell

I'd never heard of this book before I read it, I had actually gone to the library to get Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (a book I've herad a few people rave about), when I got there it had gone but they had this, his latest novel, as I was in a rush I just got it without actually reading what it was about. The Story Black Swan Green is so named after the village where 13 year old Jason Taylor lives with his mum, dad and older sister Julia. When we first meet Jason he seems like any other 13 year old he's starting to fancy girl's and is desperate to be popular and liked by his peers. Underneath though Jason is hiding the fact that he's a poet whose poems ...  Read the complete review

David Mitchell developed a stammer when he was growing up in rural Worcestershire. He wrote poetry using the name TS Bolivar & it was published in the parish magazine. The title of Mitchell’s fourth novel, ‘Black Swan Green’, is the name of the (fictitious) Worcestershire village where our stammering narrator, Jason Taylor, lives. Jason writes poetry for the parish magazine under the pseudonym TS (as in Eliot) Bolivar (as in Simon). Mitchell was born in 1969; the book’s 13 chapters, which consist of self-contained short stories, are set in successive months from January 1982 to January 1983. Jason turns 13 early in the book. So: smart readers will have ...  Read the complete review