David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green 

I might as well just come out and say it – I was under whelmed by David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green. The problem, I suspect, is that with all the hype surrounding Mitchell and this book, I was expecting something a little more, shall we say (to quote its protagonist’s favorite epithet) epic. The blurb at the back of the copy I read, for instance, calls Black Swan Green “Great Britain’s Catcher in the Rye”. In actual fact it’s more like Great Britain’s Wonder Years. This is Nick Hornby meets Roddy Doyle, with a hint of Richmal Crompton thrown in. There’s nothing to scoff at in that mix, but the end result is a book that makes for pleasurable light reading, but fails to dazzle.  

Oh, it’s an entertaining enough book. Mitchell is a clever writer, and the book is chock full of colorful characters, delightful descriptions and vignettes from teenage life that will make you chuckle out loud even as you think back to the time when you yourself were 13. But the story, though charming in its own way, is far from original, and after a while the whole thing starts to seem predictable and a little, well, wet (to use yet another 13 year old epithet). The trouble is that there’s little or no edge to this story, no real attitude, no authentic sense of risk. You know nothing really bad or traumatic is going to happen. The whole thing is too vanilla, too Hollywood – like the script of a TV sitcom or the movie that Mitchell seems to have written this book for. 

But first, the details. Black Swan Green is the story of Jason Taylor, a 13 year old living in the small community of Black Swan Green in Worcestershire. Taylor is a sweet, sensitive kid, who suffers from a speech impediment and writes poetry, but who is desperate to keep these things from his schoolmates because being interested in poetry is ‘gay’ and his classmates will make merciless fun of him if they ever find out that he stammers. Being accepted by his peer group is a big theme for Jason (as it is for most 13 year olds, I guess) and he finds himself constantly having to suppress his real self in order to fit in. Jason’s stammer thus becomes a metaphor for a larger lack of self expression – the constraints that being judged by other people places on our identity. As Jason puts it: 

“I hadn’t stammered once, the whole time I’d been talking to Mrs. Gretton…S’pose it’s the other person? The other person’s expectations? S’pose that’s why I can read aloud in an empty room, perfectly, or to a horse, or a dog, or myself?” 

The book traces Jason’s life through his thirteenth year, including one chapter for every month. Each chapter is really a short story by itself, with the same basic characters and a few common threads running through the book. This gives the novel a fragmented, episodic quality (again the TV sitcom motif). As the story progresses, domestic tension in the Taylor household rises, pushing Jason’s parents towards divorce. Meanwhile Jason himself is having a tough time in school, having to deal with a sharp decline in his popularity and with bullying by some of the older, tougher kids.  

So. We’ve got the divorce as seen through the eyes of a child [1] cliché. And the magically improving relationship with elder sibling cliché (Jason has an older sister). We’ve got all the clichés about being a young boy growing up – dealing with bullies, coping with a handicap, figuring out what to do with your unpopular best friend (aka the loyalty vs. popularity dilemma). Oh, and this is the year that Jason ‘discovers’ girls, so we’ve got the usual first love, first kiss, ‘what planets do girls come from’ chestnuts. Did I leave something out? Oh, there’s also the ‘older boy who everyone admires and who gets killed in the war’ (the novel is set in 1982 and includes a chapter on the war in the Falklands) and ‘the guilty secret you’re trying to hide from your parents’. And the book simply teems with the kind of moralistic right vs. wrong choices that books for teenagers tend to specialize in (Is it okay to steal from your enemy? What does courage really mean?). All grown-ups in the book turn out to be kind, understanding and far less menacing than they seem to begin with. There’s even a band of wandering gypsies thrown in, to give you, no doubt, that warm, fuzzy Enid Blyton feeling.  

The point is that the plot of Black Swan Green is one hackneyed storyline after another. Mitchell pulls of these clichés with aplomb, it’s true, and he’s an interesting enough writer so you never entirely lose interest; but you never quite manage to shake off that feeling of déjà vu either.  

A large part of the problem, I think, has to do with the character of Jason. The fact is, he’s just too good to be true. He starts off normal enough – just your average clueless thirteen year old – he has a few good qualities, but is also something of a loser and too easily swayed by peer pressure. These first few chapters of the book really sing, largely because Mitchell gets the tone right. Then, just as you’re starting to warm to the book, he goes and falls into the sentimental trap of making his main protagonist a hero. By the time the novel ends, Jason has become super-popular by doing the right thing (ya, that happens!), he’s got the girl, he’s won the respect of classmates and teachers alike, he’s become self-aware and confident, even his stammer doesn’t seem to be worrying him as much – he’s superboy. So much for realism. This kind of blatant sentimentality is all very well when you’re writing novels for fourteen year olds, but those of us who’ve got past our adolescence recognize that kids at 14 are just as messed up at 14 as they are at 13, so all this growing up and finding himself Jason seems to have done seems artificial.  

Nor is this the only thing about Jason that makes him seem a touch unreal. There’s also the fact that he doesn’t seem to have any interest or hobbies – nothing that he’s really passionate about. He seems singularly uninterested in books (for someone who apparently has considerable talent as a writer) and while Mitchell drops the obligatory pop references, he doesn’t seem particularly into any kind of music or sport. You keep wondering – what does this kid actually care about? Sure, lots of things make him anxious, but what makes him happy?  

No, Jason Taylor is not a convincing thirteen year old, and this makes pretty much the entire book seem a little fake. Like some sugarcoated modern day fairy tale, written for the consumption of tweenagers with literary pretensions.  

That said, Black Swan Green has its moments. The best bits in the book are the ones where the focus is on the book’s supporting cast - Jason’s uber-cool (but flawed) cousin Hugo, his school masters Mr. Nixon and Mr. Kempsey, the mysterious Belgian émigré Madame Crommelynck – characters who populate the fringes of Jason’s world, but provide sketches of delightful and much need originality. Black Swan Green is a deliriously funny book in parts, it’s only as a compelling novel overall that it doesn’t really work.  

In conclusion, this is a book only worth reading if you expect very little from it. Approach it as a lighthearted bubblegum fantasy about childhood / adolescence, a sort of literary Malcolm in the Middle, and you’ll enjoy yourself thoroughly. Read it expecting a mature and nuanced classic filled with rich psychological insight, and you’re bound to come away (as I did) wondering what all the fuss was about.  

[1] To really see this done well, read Roddy Doyle’s marvelous Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha.

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