Black Swan Green

I didn’t get very far with David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas
before giving up in despair. It had been so highly praised that I was delighted when other people confessed that it had failed to press their buttons. I was then assured that Black Swan Green was completely different, one advisor telling me, rather humiliatingly, (you know who you are :-)) that it was ‘more accessible’. It is. Jason is growing up in the Midlands in the early 1980s and the book circles around his home life (difficult), school (worse), out of school (scary) and what goes on in his head (strange). It’s well written, if chockfull of date-pointers, as so many books now seem to be. I’m enjoying it but, I will just say this quietly, it is poshed-up Adrian Mole with less funny jokes. Yes folks, I think Sue Townsend is a better writer than David Mitchell. The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole makes you laugh, makes you cry and is brilliantly succinct. Black Swan Green makes you think: this author is quite clever.