![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Note: In the following review, I discuss the book's structural conceit, which is not obvious until midway through the narrative. As said conceit has no real effect on the plot, I personally don't think the discussion would keep anyone from enjoying the story. But I know some people prefer to go in cold, so consider this a spoiler warning for the first half of the book.
It's so rare that a book surprises me like this.
I love stories. In college I was an English major, and while I never actually finished my degree, I always enjoyed literary analysis, studying theme and foreshadowing and archetypes and narrative arcs. And while all this knowledge has given me the ability to articulate much of what I enjoy about storytelling, it also means that I usually have a pretty good idea where a well-constructed tale is going. And that's fine; as with music, even when the underlying chord structure is largely the same, there's great joy to be found in the differing details that each author's perspective adds to the universal plot beats.
For the first several chapters, Black Swan Green feels like a pretty standard coming-of-age story - a memoir-style 1980s Tom Sawyer. Well-written, to be sure, and boasting David Mitchell's established facility with slang and dialect in evoking class and setting, but nonetheless pretty straightforward, with none of the metafictional commentary featured in the author's other work. I was fine with that, really; as much as I loved Cloud Atlas, there were parts where the Mitchell's cleverness was borderline distracting. Besides, I would never begrudge an author the desire to branch out and try something new. So I settled in to read the story of Jason Taylor, thirteen-year-old boy in Thatcherite England, schoolboy and secret poet, growing up under equally dysfunctional auspices of his parents' rapidly-disintegrating marriage and the Conservative Empire To Last A Thousand Years.
And then, precisely halfway through, Taylor meets a particular old woman who lectures him on the nature of art and poetry and writing, who challenges his assumptions and reorients his whole perspective...and who, in the course of her explanations, alters our perspective on the text as well, shifting it just a hair to the left until what appeared to be a workaday growing-up tale reveals the metafictional commentary that it's been harboring the whole time. And that's really the genius of it - the commentary's been there all along, but the story's protective coloring is so effective that even if you're half-expecting it, you don't catch it until it's pointed out to you. (In the lone concession to Mitchell's previously-noted tendencies toward self-indulgent wit, the perspective-shifting character is related to one of the characters from Cloud Atlas, a much more obviously metafictional tale.) And for the entire rest of the story, you see where and how the commentary is placed - never obtrusive, but now that your attention has been drawn to it, it's everywhere.
Still, as delightful (or self-satisfied, depending on your perspective) as that turn is, it would feel hollow if Jason Taylor's story had merely been a vehicle for cleverness. Fortunately, Mitchell's also-established facility with character and dialogue is out in full force. Taylor's world is populated with authentic-feeling characters, and his struggles, both internal (dealing with a speech impediment, his desire for acceptance, his deciding which of his internal personae to listen to at any given moment) and external (being on the sidelines of his parents' dissolving marriage, fighting to maintain his place on the slippery social ladder) have real weight and pathos. And, because Mitchell is probably incapable of not being clever, Taylor's arc mirrors that of the novel - growing from a social chameleon of unremarkable status and fickle loyalties to a young man confident enough to break the unwritten rules for the sake of speaking the truth.
I love stories. I love seeing stories try to do something unusual. I love it even better when they don't forget that they're stories first and foremost. I love it best when they manage to pull off both at once. And given that we're two-for-two on amazing novels from him, I think it's safe to say at this point that I love David Mitchell, too. A++ with cherries on top
It's so rare that a book surprises me like this.
I love stories. In college I was an English major, and while I never actually finished my degree, I always enjoyed literary analysis, studying theme and foreshadowing and archetypes and narrative arcs. And while all this knowledge has given me the ability to articulate much of what I enjoy about storytelling, it also means that I usually have a pretty good idea where a well-constructed tale is going. And that's fine; as with music, even when the underlying chord structure is largely the same, there's great joy to be found in the differing details that each author's perspective adds to the universal plot beats.
For the first several chapters, Black Swan Green feels like a pretty standard coming-of-age story - a memoir-style 1980s Tom Sawyer. Well-written, to be sure, and boasting David Mitchell's established facility with slang and dialect in evoking class and setting, but nonetheless pretty straightforward, with none of the metafictional commentary featured in the author's other work. I was fine with that, really; as much as I loved Cloud Atlas, there were parts where the Mitchell's cleverness was borderline distracting. Besides, I would never begrudge an author the desire to branch out and try something new. So I settled in to read the story of Jason Taylor, thirteen-year-old boy in Thatcherite England, schoolboy and secret poet, growing up under equally dysfunctional auspices of his parents' rapidly-disintegrating marriage and the Conservative Empire To Last A Thousand Years.
And then, precisely halfway through, Taylor meets a particular old woman who lectures him on the nature of art and poetry and writing, who challenges his assumptions and reorients his whole perspective...and who, in the course of her explanations, alters our perspective on the text as well, shifting it just a hair to the left until what appeared to be a workaday growing-up tale reveals the metafictional commentary that it's been harboring the whole time. And that's really the genius of it - the commentary's been there all along, but the story's protective coloring is so effective that even if you're half-expecting it, you don't catch it until it's pointed out to you. (In the lone concession to Mitchell's previously-noted tendencies toward self-indulgent wit, the perspective-shifting character is related to one of the characters from Cloud Atlas, a much more obviously metafictional tale.) And for the entire rest of the story, you see where and how the commentary is placed - never obtrusive, but now that your attention has been drawn to it, it's everywhere.
Still, as delightful (or self-satisfied, depending on your perspective) as that turn is, it would feel hollow if Jason Taylor's story had merely been a vehicle for cleverness. Fortunately, Mitchell's also-established facility with character and dialogue is out in full force. Taylor's world is populated with authentic-feeling characters, and his struggles, both internal (dealing with a speech impediment, his desire for acceptance, his deciding which of his internal personae to listen to at any given moment) and external (being on the sidelines of his parents' dissolving marriage, fighting to maintain his place on the slippery social ladder) have real weight and pathos. And, because Mitchell is probably incapable of not being clever, Taylor's arc mirrors that of the novel - growing from a social chameleon of unremarkable status and fickle loyalties to a young man confident enough to break the unwritten rules for the sake of speaking the truth.
I love stories. I love seeing stories try to do something unusual. I love it even better when they don't forget that they're stories first and foremost. I love it best when they manage to pull off both at once. And given that we're two-for-two on amazing novels from him, I think it's safe to say at this point that I love David Mitchell, too. A++ with cherries on top
