LoveReading Says
LoveReading Says
The story of a year in the life of Jason Taylor, 13 years old, growing up in an English village in the early 1980’s. Jason is a hugely likeable character, intelligent and thoughtful and yet mercilessly bullied for the stammer he has. A coming of age novel that is sensitive, intelligent and a thoroughly enjoyable read with something for everyone to empathise with.
May 2010 Guest Editor John Boyne on David Mitchell...
For me, Mitchell is the best writer of my own generation. Each book displays a gift for language and verbal acrobatics which dazzle the reader while never descending into self-indulgence. However my favourite of his books is probably his quietest, Black Swan Green.
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Black Swan Green Synopsis
David Mitchell comes home - to England, 1982, and the cusp of adolescence.
Jason Taylor is 13, doomed to be growing up in the most boring family in the deadest village (Black Swan Green) in the dullest county (Worcestershire) in the most tedious nation (England) on earth. And he stammers. 13 chapters, each as self-contained as a short story, follow 13 months in his life as he negotiates the pitfalls of school and home and contends with bullies, girls and family politics. In the distance, the Falklands conflict breaks out; close at hand, the village mobilises against a gypsy camp. And through Jason`s eyes, we see what he doesn`t know he knows - and watch unfold what will make him wish his life had been as uneventful as he had believed.
Vividly capturing the mood of the times - high unemployment, Cold War politics and the sunset of agrarian England - this is at once a portrait of an era and of an age: the black hole between childhood and teenagerdom.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9780340822807 |
| Publication date: |
2nd April 2007 |
| Author: |
David Mitchell |
| Publisher: |
Sceptre an imprint of Hodder & Stoughton General Division |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pagination: |
371 pages |
| Primary Genre |
Modern and Contemporary Fiction
|
| Recommendations: |
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Author
About David Mitchell
Born in 1969, David Mitchell grew up in Worcestershire. After graduating from Kent University, he taught English in Japan, where he wrote his first novel, Ghostwritten. Published in 1999, it was awarded the Mail on Sunday John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. His second novel, number9dream, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and in 2003, David Mitchell was selected as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. His third novel, Cloud Atlas, was shortlisted for six awards including the Man Booker Prize, and adapted for film in 2012. It was followed by Black Swan Green, shortlisted for the Costa Novel of the Year Award, and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, which was a No. 1 Sunday Times bestseller. Both were also longlisted for the Booker. In 2013, The Reason I Jump: One Boy's Voice From the Silence of Autism by Naoki Higashida was published in a translation from the Japanese by David Mitchell and KA Yoshida. It was an immediate bestseller in the UK and later in the US as well.
Author photo © Paul Stuart
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