Black Swan Green

I finished David Mitchell's Black Swan Green yesterday. It was the best book I've read since, well, Cloud Atlas. (OK, just perused my book list -- Kafka on the Shore was as enrapturing, but you catch my drift as I've read about 50 books between the two Mitchell novels and the only one on par was Murakami. Well, and the George Elliot novels but that's like comparing apples to truffles. )

Before I rave, rave, rave about Black Swan Green I want to take the piss at the reviews and blurbs. Yes, they are glowing but comparing it to other "coming of age novels" and calling it the British Catcher in the Rye? C'mon. Salinger is a great writer, but Holden Caulfield is a complete wanker, sympathetic only to other disillusioned privileged teenaged boys seeing a reflection of their apathy and disengagement. Mitchell's Jason Taylor is a wonderful boy: intelligent, sensitive, geeky, awkward and believable. And ultimately, unlike many male coming of age protagonists, a mensch through and through. (Plus, Jason is a considerable bit younger and less penis obsessed than these Alexander Portnoys and Charles Highways. I know, give him a couple years, right? But I doubt it.) The Kirkus blurb on the back claims that Jason's adventures recall those of Tom and Huck. Huh? How so? In as much as he has scuffles with other kids and meets interesting adults along the way, perhaps, but what a lame parallel. Huck has Jim, Tom has Becky and Huck, Jason -- in a true mirror of 13 -- has only himself.

I don't want to compare Black Swan Green to other novels. It is in and of itself brilliant and compelling, funny and sad. Mitchell's prose is crystaline, his portrait of adolescence vivid -- I felt the pangs, confusions and yearnings of 13 all over again. Without sentimentality. Although there is a touch of nostalgia for the Golden Age of early 80s music, for which I'm a big suckerfish. Like Ghostwritten and Cloud Atlas (I'm comparing Mitchell to Mitchell. Apparently I cannot resist comparison.) the stories are about the overall human condition, but without being heavy handed or pretentiously philosophical. When so many contemporary novels are self-conscious, riddled with "look how clever I am" gimmickry, it is delightful to read stories without pyrotechnics, just taut prose and vibrant characters.

Mitchell is the master of the chapter. Here, the novel is divided into 13 chapters, one from each month between Jason's 13 and 14th birthdays. Each chapter could stand alone as a short story, but the arc through them swells, like the movements in a symphony. Jason's maturity grows subtly as the bookprogresses, but without any singular ah ha coming of age moment. In the end, he is a wiser, more mature and secure 14 year old, but he's still only 14, not the adult looking back at 14.

Just suck it up and go buy it in hardcover.