Written by David Mitchell
“Me, I want to bloody kick this moronic bloody world in the bloody teeth over and over till it bloody understands that not hurting people is ten bloody thousand times more important than being right.”
The English always do it better…and the thing they do best of all is coming-of-age stories, set in the 1980s.
Ever since I read The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, I was hooked on this type of literature. The innocent exploration of life-and-death friendships, budding sexual identity, school wars, family life, and the impact of the wider world…mixed in with pop culture smacks of music, television, politics, fashion…coming together to tell a story full of laughter (again, British humour at its finest), tears, and surprising poignancy. Adrian Mole had it all…and Black Swan Green comes right behind it.
Using 1982 and the Falklands War as a background, Black Swan Green tells the story of Jason Taylor, a 13 year old growing up in the sleepiest & muddiest of villages, trying hard not become victim of (a) his ever-present stammering — described with the use of a startling “hangman” euphemism, and (b) his love of poetry…which is incredibly, terminally uncool. It’s a novel told in the form of inter-linked short stories…and it brilliantly captures everything you could want from this type of melodrama. It would make an amazing BBC TV series…IF the scripts lived up to the brilliance of the characters.
What I love best about this type of novel is the slang: the exquisite reality behind the code-like speech of children and teenagers. As a child growing up in that time, I remember all of this type of school-yard speak (in spite of the added layers of English subtext). These characters speak to me of a simpler, golden age of childhood, where intrusions by the cold reality of the 1980s (especially on the domestic front) always seemed as puzzling to me as it does to the characters in this novel.
“Rule On is Blank out the Consequences. Ignore the rule, and you’ll hesitate, botch it, and be caught like Steve McQueen on barbed wire in The Great Escape. That’s why, in Metalwork this morning, I focused on Mr. Murcot’s birthmarks like my life depended on it. He’s got two long ones on his throat in the shape of New Zealand.”
Brilliant dialogue, brilliant storytelling…in short, it’s a work of nostalgic, honey-glazed art. It’s never maudlin, it never tries too hard to show right and wrong…it simply leaves the reader to judge the characters for better and for worse, and the era plays like a soundtrack in the background. It’s the kind of novel Mark Twain might have written, had a slightly older Huck Finn lived in Britain during the early Thatcher years.
It also has a happy, if bittersweet, ending…something that seems rare in this day and age. It leaves the reader extremely satisfied, but avoids any saccharine pitfalls that would threaten the verisimilitude of the setting. In short, it’s more Life on Mars for kids, rather than soapy Coronation Street. Frankly, you can’t ask for a better, more enjoyable read. It’s one of those sink-into-the-tub books — something in which you can luxuriate, without any decadent after-taste. Black Swan Green is the kind of novel that’s full of characters you wish had been your friends in childhood. In short, it’s never disappointing.
“Superman II was on TV. I’d seen it at Malvern Cinema about two years ago on Neal Brose’s birthday. It wasn’t bad but not worth sacrificing my own private frozen lake for. Clark Kent gives up his powers just to have sexual intercourse with Lois Lane in a glittery bed. Who’d make such a stupid swap? If you could fly? Deflect nuclear missiles into space? Turn back time by spinning the planet in reverse? Sexual intercourse can’t be that good.”
