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May 05, 2006

GUEST REVIEW - PORTRAIT OF A STAMMERER

Bsg Black Swan Green
David Mitchell
Random House
320 pp
$23.95

GUEST REVIEW BY JIM RULAND

David Mitchell’s new novel Black Swan Green tells the story of Jason Taylor, a thirteen-year-old-boy who resides in a fictional village in the north of England that supplies the novel with its name. Admirers of the literary pyrotechnics that left critics of Mitchell’s previous novel, Cloud Atlas, slack-jawed with admiration, will undoubtedly be disappointed with the book’s straight-forward plot and linear narrative; but those who peg the novel as a simple coming-of-age story will miss out on a read that is both clever and engaging.

Jason is thirteen-years-old, which means he’s typically fantasizing about war games one minute and the farmer’s daughter the next, even though their respective realities are as alien and remote to him as the inside of an iceberg. Jason is the ultimate outsider: not only is he a transplant to the village, he’s introverted, intelligent, writes poetry, and, worst of all, stammers, which makes him a helpless target for Black Swan Green’s numerous bullies, toughs and wannabe hard men. The stammering is an excellent device for driving the narrator inward and ramps up the tension in situations where Jason is called upon to speak. The fact that Jason shares this affliction with the novel’s author is considerably less interesting than Mitchell’s knack for knowing how and when to exploit it.

Black Swan Green’s narrative is loose and episodic. Although the themes and storylines cohere and converge in the manner one would expect a novel to behave, the chapters are singularly independent and many could stand alone as short stories. This treatment gives the novel plenty of seams for information to fall through. For example, a tryst between a classmate and a sailor on shore leave that Jason witnesses early in the novel turns somber when the sailor dies in the Falklands and is further complicated by the arrival of a baby. This information seeps into the narrative in a way that is subtle yet obvious. Mitchell seems to be suggesting that novels are like villages: isolated vacuums in which everything can be known and nothing stays secret for long.

The chapters, however, are often frenetic affairs. Typically, a writers inserts white space between paragraphs to signal a change in time, place or both; Mitchell clutters the narrative with them even when only a few seconds have passed, a few meters traveled. The effect speeds up the pace of the novel, but the result is often needlessly disorienting. Mitchell offers no less than the Mona Lisa as an inspiration for this technique. Nevertheless, Mitchell’s use of a broad canvas to depict a small village with a rotating cast of fierce bullies, lush babes and wise gypsies, will win over audiences when Black Swan Green eventually hits the small screen as a BBC serial.

But Black Swan Green is neither a puzzle book nor a British Wonder Years; Mitchell is far too good for either. Mid-way through the novel, he pulls a rabbit out of his hat that simultaneously turns the narrative on its ear and resurrects a character from Cloud Atlas. All the clues have been planted in advance, but like a net in tall grass, Mitchell scoops the reader up in his trap and reveals a completely new perspective that adds richness and complexity to the novel.

Even though the book has a title that wouldn’t be out of place on a Ned’s Atomic Dustbin album, the wonks are already comparing Black Swan Green to Catcher in the Rye, but Mitchell’s novel bears a closer affinity with Ham on Rye, Charles Bukowski’s autobiographical novel about using the torments of adolescence to forge an artistic identity. Whether Mitchell is breathing life into post apocalyptic fantasies or recasting his childhood into a grim English fairy tale, he’s the rare storyteller who can be counted upon to deliver a read that is as pleasurable as it is rewarding.

Posted at 12:01 AM in Reviews |

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Comments

Jim Tomlinson

Thanks for this. Black Swan Green sounds marvelous! I'll look for it in the book store tomorrow.

Posted by: Jim Tomlinson | May 05, 2006 at 08:35 AM

James

That's a cruelly tempting link you have(n't) posted there. The Mona Lisa retains her enigma, I guess.

Posted by: James | May 05, 2006 at 08:39 AM

Jim Ruland

Sorry, still a few nits we're working out:
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2006/April/02/style/stories/04style.htm

Posted by: Jim Ruland | May 05, 2006 at 09:00 AM

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TEV DEFINED


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