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A Year In the Life of a Boy
By bukkhead | August 3, 2007
BOOK REVIEW: ‘BLACK SWAN GREEN’
by David Mitchell
294 pages
Published by Random House.
I came across David Mitchell when I was browsing a bookstore and picked up Cloud Atlas. I don’t know why I end up drawn to British writers, or why I’m so motivated by the Booker Prize nominees. One assumes a sameness in Geoff Nicholson, or Tibor Fischer, but assure you there is not one. Perhaps they have a different editorial policy in Britain, or maybe they promote new writers differently than in America. Seems like over here, a new young writer has to be telling us how he wants to sleep with, kill, or mourn his mother. That’s a broad-stroke description, I know, but then again, find me a hot new writer who doesn’t write about mom. Please.
I finished Black Swan Green a while ago, but I’ve been struggling with what to say. “It’s a good book,” just doesn’t seem to cut it. It follows one year, to the day, in the life a boy living in semi-rural England, in the eighties. But Mitchell eschews nostalgia, so don’t turn to this to re-capture your own youth. Then again, the eighties in semi-rural England were probably different than the eighties here in America, so maybe it’s chock full of nostalgia and I just don’t know it.
Another thing I don’t know much about, though I’ve heard plenty, is the class struggle still prevelant in England. Certainly we have notions of class in America. But in England, it seems, class is imposed on even 13-year-olds, who create their own structures, where one is qualified by whether they are referred to by first name, last name, or nickname. And one not only possesses a certain class, but has to fight to maintain position, not unlike baboons fighting for their line in the pecking order.
So for me, watching the class struggles was interesting. On the other hand, I do know what it was like to be 13, and I can tell you that Mitchell doesn’t bother with the all of that “coming of age” nonsense that, it seems, is so often trotted out as an excuse to write another damn novel. Sure, it’s a compelling, powerful moment in a person’s life, but in my mind, it’s meaningless without knowing how the rest of that person’s life turned out. Puberty is awkward, yes. The first kiss is scary and sweet at the same time, sure. Discovering your parents are not perfect people is awful, indeed. I just don’t want to have to slog though it again and again and again.
So what’s good about Black Swan Green? The same thing as Mitchell’s other novels. He’s got that consistency of style that keeps you locked in. At the same time as he writes like a 13-year-old boy, he doesn’t make the mistake of actually writing what an actual 13-year-old would write. So while I’m not fan of that other cliché, the semi-autobiographical novel, at least it’s not a first novel, and at least he uses, not abuses, his own life to create this work.
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