Contemporary Reads: Black Swan Green

Black Swan Green (2006) is the latest novel by David Mitchell. Each of Black Swan Green's thirteen chapters follows a month in Jason's life, from January 1982 when his sprained ankle is bound up by the witchy crone who lives in the House in the Woods one dark frozen night after skating on the village pond, to January 1983 when the crone is revealed as a harmless old woman now the tenant of her son-in-law's granny flat. Following an episodic form rather than a conventionally linear narrative structure, the novel offers a series of vivid snapshots of Jason's life as he passes the milestone of his thirteenth birthday and begins a journey towards a new, hard-earned maturity.

Jason is far from a social pariah but equally far from fitting in to his male classmates' carefully constructed world where difference is derided, weakness cruelly mocked and transgressions of elaborate codes brutally punished. Already suffering the disadvantage of living in a middle-class enclave, Jason knows that discovery of his stammer will result in merciless persecution. He takes evasive action, quickly substituting alternative words when the Hangman threatens to tie his tongue into knots, gaining a rich vocabulary in the process and employing it in writing poetry under the pseudonym Eliot Bolivar for the parish magazine. He's careful not to be seen too often with Dean 'Moron' Moran, although by the end of the year the two are firm friends. Spring is dominated by news of the Falklands War and the death aboard HMS Coventry of Tom Yew, an old boy from Jason's school and the father of Debby Crombie's unborn child. After an unexpected display of cheek, Jason finds himself invited to join the village secret society but despite triumphantly completing the initiation test he is disqualified for acting according to his better nature. Meanwhile his parents are increasingly embroiled in sniping matches and, come the autumn, he finds himself lonelier that he had ever expected when his sister Julia leaves for university. A proposal for a permanent gypsy site has the village up in arms and Jason's encounter with the gypsies leads to another step along the road to maturity. The climax of Jason's year finds him facing down his bullying persecutors and, bathed in glory, experiencing his first kiss at the local disco. The following year begins with Jason saying goodbye to his father and to Black Swan Green as his parents finally part. Jason leaves for Cheltenham with his mother filled with trepidation at being the 'New Kid Whose Parents By The Way Are Getting Divorced', hardly daring to believe Julia's gentle reassurance that 'it'll be all right in the end'.