Black Swan Green (David Mitchell)
Mitchell wrote Cloud Atlas, which absolutely entranced — if also slightly confused — me, and Black Swan Green is his latest novel. However, it is hard at first glance to recognize the one author in the two extremely different works. The Cloud Atlas skipped through time with multiple, unconnected narrators, and Black Swan Green focuses around one character over a very specific space of time, specific in the boy’s life and specific to one historical time period — the 1980s in England. The first was quite post-modern, like an abstract painting the viewer needs time and experience to digest, and the other is a traditional landscape, simple and obviously lovely, one of many coming-of-age tales, a repeat of an oft-done genre of fiction.
Yet, if you look at the language, Mitchell is still present in this later work. His language and the vivid, unique and personal descriptions of interior emotion are still there. The skill is there and undeniable. In truth, Mitchell is perhaps more present personally in this tale than in the previous. I kept getting the sneaking suspicion that this is his childhood we are romping through, his generation’s music we are bombarded with, his youthful slang. It seemed to be the semi-autobiographical story he always yearned to write and now could thanks to his recent critical and commercial successes.
An author being close to their work is usually a good thing. Yet there is a point where a story becomes simply a capsule of a moment in time gone by, a crystallized gem of pop culture and youthful angst that exists to provoke nostalgia in those who were also there, who also heard the music and spoke the slang. This brand of tale makes for a good story, but not necessarily moving fiction of the caliber of Cloud Atlas. A nostalgic story is entertaining and enlightening about what it truly felt like to exist in that one moment — true good fiction, on the other hand, is meaningful to anyone, anywhere, in any time that picks up the book and gives it go.
For example, Stephen King wrote one of his best stories with the nostalgic, coming-of-age story The Body (movie “Stand by Me“), but it was the “best” because the rest of his work is entertaining but fluffy genre fiction. Mitchell, on the other hand, has proven himself a writer of vision, of purpose, of scope. Therefore, it was not his “best” as it would have been King’s.
Black Swan Green is a great story, one that became very good in the second half where it dragged a bit in the first. But — y’all know how I like to insert that big, ominous BUT — it didn’t live up. I don’t regret reading it by any means but I know that Mitchell is capable of more depth and scope. Still a devoted fan, I wait on pins and needles for the next effort.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars – Book club selection
Fiction, Repeated Author |