Black Swan Green

#765
Title: Black Swan Green
Author: David Mitchell
Publisher: Random House
Year:2007
304 pages

Audiobook.

A bildungsroman from David Mitchell, well-written though ultimately a little precious and formulaic for me. I enjoyed the narrator's voice, and don't care that it's somewhat precocious.

In some ways I wish it had been a novel with a smaller focus--do we really need lessons about racism learned from gypsies? Surely a divorce and a broken watch are sufficient? I couldn't figure out why there was so much emphasis on a couple of characters, and found by Googling after reading that they appear in his other books. That's fine with me, but just as Ezra Pound said that the reader without a classical education should be able to read a poem at face value, without understanding its allusions, so should a reader be able to read a novel without extra-textual references throwing a wrench in the works. (Neal Stephenson, are you listening?)

Listen to Pink Floyd's album The Wall before you start reading this, or read a chapter or two of Lord of the Flies to get you in the mood for British schoolboy hierarchies and bullying. Don't pick up Skippy Dies immediately upon finishing, or you will have to set it down as soon as you get to Chapter 1 in the somnolent, annoying classroom.