Black Swan Green

Author: David Mitchell

Stock information

General Fields

  • : 36.99 NZD
  • : 9780340839263
  • : Hodder & Stoughton
  • : Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
  • :
  • : 0.566
  • : April 2006
  • : 23.2 Centimeters X 15.4 Centimeters X 2.8 Centimeters
  • : United Kingdom
  • : 36.99
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  • : books

Special Fields

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  • : David Mitchell
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  • : Paperback
  • : Export ed
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  • : English
  • : 823
  • : good-very good
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  • : 288
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Barcode 9780340839263
9780340839263

Description

From award-winning writer David Mitchell comes a sinewy, meditative novel of boyhood on the cusp of adulthood and the old on the cusp of the new.Black Swan Green tracks a single year in what is, for thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982. But the thirteen chapters, each a short story in its own right, create an exquisitely observed world that is anything but sleepy.
A world of Kissingeresque realpolitik enacted in boys games on a frozen lake; of nightcreeping through the summer backyards of strangers; of the tabloid-fueled thrills of the Falklands War and its human toll; of the cruel, luscious Dawn Madden and her power-hungry boyfriend, Ross Wilcox; of a certain Madame Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck, an elderly bohemian emigre who is both more and less than she appears; of Jason's search to replace his dead grandfather's irreplaceable smashed watch before the crime is discovered; of first cigarettes, first kisses, first Duran Duran Lps, and first deaths; of Margaret Thatcher's recession; of Gypsies camping in the woods and the hysteria they inspire; and, even closer to home, of a slow-motion divorce in four seasons.Pointed, funny, profound, left-field, elegiac, and painted with the stuff of life, Black Swan Green is David Mitchell's subtlest and most effective achievement to date.