Black Swan Green by David Mitchell

Or "OK, Josh. You win."

I love love love loved this book. Loved it. And, secretly, I didn't want to. It was recommended to me by our very own Josh Lesser who (a) likened it to my very favorite book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which automatically makes me want to think of it as Extremely Loud's bastard cousin that nobody talks about at family reunions and (b) I enjoy disagreeing with. But despite my best efforts to prove Josh wrong and say "Eh, it was all right," it's a damn good book, and I'd read it again right now if I didn't have forty-eight other books to read.

The story is simple-ish: the book starts in January 1982 and ends in January 1983 and chronicles a year in thirteen year old Jason Taylor's life. Now, maybe because it's because I majored in performance studies, but give me a book with a great narrator and I'm hooked for life. And, oh, Jason Taylor is a perf stud's dream narrator. David Mitchell does an extraordinary job crafting this character; the use of slang, the observations of early-teenage social order, his relationship with his friends and his family, his perception of his relationship with his friends and his family... wow. It is so truthful and so elegant, it honestly seems like a thirteen year old boy growing up in England in the eighties had spoken this book into a tape recorder and David Mitchell transcribed it.

I realize that seems like a silly thing to point out. "Wow! Get this: an author created a fictional person and wrote about him in such a way that made it really convincing!" It seems obvious, like something that you'd learn on the first day at Author School. But the truth is, I have never read a book that so perfectly captures the feeling of being adolescent without being romantic, condescending, or tragically dramatic. And I can't remember the last time I read a piece of fiction and felt like its main character was a living, breathing person.

And it is like Extremely Loud. Not 100%, but the comparison is definitely valid. Sort of like this:

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close - New York City + small village in England - two narrators - constant, heartbreaking anguish + hormones + a living father - Oskar's inventions = Black Swan Green.

In all seriousness though, you have 48 more books to read this year. Black Swan Green should be one of them.

Rating: 9.5/10