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Black Swan Green

Longlisted for the Booker Prize

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Black Swan Green

By: David Mitchell
Narrated by: Kristopher Milnes
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About this listen

 **Pre-order UTOPIA AVENUE, the spectacular new novel from David Mitchell.**


The dazzling novel from critically-acclaimed David Mitchell.

Shortlisted for the 2006 Costa Novel Award
Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2006

January, 1982. Thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor - covert stammerer and reluctant poet - anticipates a stultifying year in his backwater English village. But he hasn't reckoned with bullies, simmering family discord, the Falklands War, a threatened gypsy invasion and those mysterious entities known as girls. Charting thirteen months in the black hole between childhood and adolescence, this is a captivating novel, wry, painful and vibrant with the stuff of life.

(P) 2020 Hodder & Stoughton Ltd©2006 David Mitchell Coming of Age Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Small Town & Rural Fiction

Critic reviews

Black Swan Green's 'I love 1982' nostalgia is a glassy, pitch-perfect, mock-innocent surface through which something rotten might appear (Ali Smith)
The everyday details of Jason's life are lyrically transformed by the power of Mitchell's prose, which is beguiling, funny, beautifully poetic and always keenly observed. Black Swan Green is just gorgeous
Mitchell has written another complex novel, in which multiple themes run like streams of extra data beneath every incident, and understanding comes by the process of reading into a satisfying tangle of metaphor and reference. It is the best kind of contemporary fiction (M. John Harrison)
Hugely touching and enjoyable
A delight to read from beginning to end
Luminously beautiful . . . It celebrates the liberating power of language while reviewing without bitterness or resentment the role that inarticulacy, shyness, even bullying, might play in shaping the future career of a writer (Ruth Scurr)
Spry, disconcerting and moving. It is also extremely funny even - or especially - at the blackest of moments
A pitch-perfect study of a time and a place
David Mitchell's beautiful novel of growing up and learning to accept the fragility of the world shows he can do subtle, slow and moving every bit as well as he did dazzling and mind-boggling in the past works (Kazuo Ishiguro)
What is so impressive about Black Swan Green . . . is how entirely the formal artifice accommodates a naturalistic, and a thoroughly felt, story about human beings. Black Swan Green is, as its protagonist would put it, ace (Sam Leith)
All the drama and inadvertent comedy of the onset of adolescence are brilliantly laid bare . . . a deceptively easy read, at times uproariously funny
Playful and inventive, Mitchell stretches language and ideas with exuberant abandon . . . he inhabits the mind of his troubled teenager with spellbinding conviction
A very fine and tightly structured novel . . . Mitchell pulls off a beautifully ironic piece of ventriloquism; the narrator's voice is pitched perfectly and entirely credibly, the dialogue never falters (William Wall)
Intricate and beautiful
Alternately nostalgic, funny and heartbreaking . . . Mitchell has a perfect ear for that most calamitous year, the first of the teens, when we come face-to-face with the volatile nature of life
Brilliant . . . In Jason, Mitchell creates an evocative yet authentically adolescent voice, an achievement even more impressive than the ventriloquism of his earlier books
All stars
Most relevant
Was hooked from the off, fantastic acting and story. Some sentences so compelling I had to wind back and listen again.

Brilliant on all account

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I loved The Bone Clocks, Slade House, and Cloud Atlas although the latter was a bit of a slog. I think I've read everything else in his back catalog apart from this and I was left disappointed. This had actually been sat on my shelf in its physical form for years as I couldn't bring myself to read it because I was just so put off after such a strong start with books that really connected with me.

however, I have been pleasantly surprised by this audio rendition of Black swan green. I really enjoyed the story and the narration was excellent. top marks. I hope to read another David Mitchell book that captures me again because when it's good, it's really really good.

finally another David Mitchell book that I actually like

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The story of a young teen navigating his way through school and family life and making sense of the world around him. Great narration which is very expressive and empathetic to the character. One of David Mitchell most simple but most effective books, with some of his beautiful metaphors. A wonderful audible journey.

Pitch perfect

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Funny, sad, uncanny. This book started off well and grew on me more and more until the end. Absolutely loved it.

Superb

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Being a similar age to David Mitchell, this semi autobiographical novel resonated with me and it took me back to 1982, Set in rural Worcestershire some of the characters and escapades could easily have been plots from TV mockumentary sitcom This Country and it is strange how country teenagers create their own mythologies and social structures. The cultural references to the period were spot on and I loved the mentions of Scalextric and Peanut Yorkie Bars; this was a remarkable year in many ways with the Falklands conflict and Chariots of Fire film and the music and fashions and anyone who lived through it and was a teenager at the time will love the way that the era of brought to life in this book.

I could have been there

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