Black Swan Green

Black Swan Green (2006) is a semiautobiographical novel by David Mitchell. Set in Worcestershire, England, beginning in January 1982, the book follows 12-year-old protagonist Jason Taylor. The book functions as a bildungsroman, or a coming-of-age story, that covers a crucial period of Jason’s adolescence; each of the 13 chapters represents one month in a year of his life. The novel takes its name from Jason’s small village, but the name is ironic, since the nearby lake is noticeably lacking in swans.

Plot Summary

Jason is a sensitive 12-year-old boy. He struggles with bullies at school, who tease him for his stammer. He loves poetry but writes under a penname, knowing the teasing would get worse if his classmates found out. Though they bully him mercilessly, Jason wants nothing more than their acceptance, as he feels incredibly isolated and alone.

The novel opens with the phone ringing in Jason’s father’s home office. Though Jason is forbidden from entering the office, he answers the phone anyway. He hears breathing and a baby crying before the call disconnects. Jason then goes to the frozen lake to play with the other boys. Struck by the urge to pee, he enters the woods, where he meets the sour aunt, a senile old woman who speaks nonsense.

Family dinner is tense that night. Jason admits to answering the phone, as does his older sister Julia. Later, Jason returns to the lake, where he finds a strange boy skating on the frozen surface. Jason injures his ankle skating around the lake, so he visits the sour aunt for medicine, then falls asleep in her house. Upon waking, he finds the door locked and his grandfather’s expensive watch broken.

By the next month, Jason has dismissed the strange incident as a dream. He’s dreading a public speaking assembly at school, but his speech therapist calls to request he be excused from the assignment. One of Jason’s many bullies objects to this “special treatment.”

The next month Aunt Alice visits with her family. While eavesdropping on a conversation between his mom and Aunt Alice, Jason learns about an “incident” involving his dad five years earlier. Later, Jason and his cousin Hugo play darts. Jason also tags along when Hugo steals cigarettes from a store; he smokes one, hoping to appear cool, but he throws up instead.

A month later Jason is inspired to explore the area. He encounters several scary and unsettling things along the way: He learns that his friend Dean Moran’s father is an alcoholic, he catches Tom Yew having sex with his girlfriend, and he has a brief altercation with a mental health patient.

Meanwhile, things remain tense between Jason’s parents; his mother arranges to have a rockery constructed in the backyard in an act of revenge against his father. With things tense at home, Jason tries engaging with his classmates. After Jason successfully participates in a prank, a group of boys called the Spooks invites him to an initiation challenge. Jason and Moran must pass a series of obstacles before time runs out, or else they’ll never become Spooks. Jason succeeds, but Moran falls through a glass greenhouse. When Jason goes back for Moran, the Spooks rescind his membership and continue bullying him.

Around this same time, Jason meets Madame Crommelynck, who encourages him to read new books and write poetry in his own name. When Madame Crommelynck and her husband are extradited to Germany, Jason is left feeling alone and confused.

That summer Jason joins his father on a business trip; he also travels to Cheltenham with his mother, where they visit antique shops. Jason asks why they haven’t taken a vacation together with his father, but his mother avoids answering him directly.

School resumes, and Jason endures more bullying from his classmates, who harass him and mock his stammer. The village meets to discuss a proposed Gypsy settlement in the area; the proceedings are charged with racism and quickly devolve into pandemonium. When Jason falls into a quarry and meets a band of Gypsies himself, engaging in conversation with them, he realizes that they’re just people. He also realizes how racist the villagers, including his father, were at the meeting.

Jason attends a fair with Moran and Moran’s sister. There, he finds the wallet of Ross Wilcox, one of his bullies, full of money. Jason ultimately decides to return the wallet. As Ross speeds away from the fair on his motorcycle, he gets into a bad accident that leaves him with one leg amputated at the knee.

Things finally begin turning around for Jason. He stands up to his bullies at school, and he kisses the new girl named Holly at the disco. That same night, however, Jason’s dad confesses his infidelity. This signals the end of his parents’ marriage. They separate, and Jason prepares to move to Cheltenham with his mother. Before leaving Black Swan Green, he returns to the lake in the woods and revisits the sour aunt.

Back at home, he goes through all the mementoes he kept from the past year. He cries, not wanting to trade his current life for one that’s new and unfamiliar. His sister Julia comforts him, assuring him that everything will be all right.