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Black Swan Green
Contributor(s): Mitchell, David (Author)
ISBN: 0812974018     ISBN-13: 9780812974010
Publisher: Random House Trade
OUR PRICE:   $15.30  
Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats
Published: February 2007
Qty:
Temporarily out of stock - Will ship within 2 to 5 weeks
Annotation: Thirteen chapters provide monthly snapshots of Jason Taylor's life in small-town England. Whether battling his stammer, navigating the social hierarchy of his schoolmates, or watching the slow disintegration of his parents' marriage, he relates his story in a voice that is achingly true to life.
Additional Information
BISAC Categories:
- Fiction | Literary
- Fiction | Coming Of Age
- Fiction | Visionary & Metaphysical
Dewey: FIC
Lexile Measure: 720
Physical Information: 0.8" H x 5.4" W x 8.2" (0.55 lbs) 304 pages
Themes:
- Topical - Adolescence/Coming of Age
- Cultural Region - British Isles
- Chronological Period - 1980's
Accelerated Reader Info
Quiz #: 115221
Reading Level: 4.4   Interest Level: Upper Grades   Point Value: 16.0
 
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc.
Publisher Description:
By the New York Times bestselling author of The Bone Clocks and Cloud Atlas Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize

Selected by Time as One of the Ten Best Books of the Year A New York Times Notable Book Named One of the Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post Book World, The Christian Science Monitor, Rocky Mountain News, and Kirkus Reviews A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist Winner of the ALA Alex Award Finalist for the Costa Novel Award

From award-winning writer David Mitchell comes a sinewy, meditative novel of boyhood on the cusp of adulthood and the old on the cusp of the new.

Black Swan Green tracks a single year in what is, for thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982. But the thirteen chapters, each a short story in its own right, create an exquisitely observed world that is anything but sleepy. A world of Kissingeresque realpolitik enacted in boys' games on a frozen lake; of "nightcreeping" through the summer backyards of strangers; of the tabloid-fueled thrills of the Falklands War and its human toll; of the cruel, luscious Dawn Madden and her power-hungry boyfriend, Ross Wilcox; of a certain Madame Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck, an elderly bohemian emigr who is both more and less than she appears; of Jason's search to replace his dead grandfather's irreplaceable smashed watch before the crime is discovered; of first cigarettes, first kisses, first Duran Duran LPs, and first deaths; of Margaret Thatcher's recession; of Gypsies camping in the woods and the hysteria they inspire; and, even closer to home, of a slow-motion divorce in four seasons.

Pointed, funny, profound, left-field, elegiac, and painted with the stuff of life, Black Swan Green is David Mitchell's subtlest and most effective achievement to date.

Praise for Black Swan Green

" David Mitchell has created] one of the most endearing, smart, and funny young narrators ever to rise up from the pages of a novel. . . . The always fresh and brilliant writing will carry readers back to their own childhoods. . . . This enchanting novel makes us remember exactly what it was like."--The Boston Globe

" David Mitchell is a] prodigiously daring and imaginative young writer. . . . As in the works of Thomas Pynchon and Herman Melville, one feels the roof of the narrative lifted off and oneself in thrall."--Time