Black Swan Green

By: David Mitchell

Narrated by: Kristopher Milnes

Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, 2006.
Shortlisted for the Costa Book Awards, 2006
Shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Best Book, 2007.

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.

©2006 David Mitchell (P)2006 Hodder & Stoughton Audiobooks

Critic reviews

"David Mitchell is dizzyingly, dazzlingly good....The everyday details of Jason's life are lyrically transformed by the power of his prose, which is beguiling, funny, beautifully poetic, and always keenly observed. Black Swan Green is just gorgeous." ( Daily Mail)
"Shunning the more flamboyant storytelling methods of his earlier novels, Mitchell has written a book that brilliantly captures the awkward intensity of adolescence." ( The Sunday Times)