Black swan green

How hard it is sometimes to adapt to the society and its norms, to live up to somebody’s expectations, to find the best solution in life. All these challenges are faced by Jason Taylor, the main character of the novel Black Swan Green written by David Stephen Mitchell, a famous English novelist.

On the cusp of adolescence, Jason Taylor is at an awkward stage: middling in the popularity stakes, terrified that his stammer will be exposed and harbouring a furtive predilection for writing poetry. A small village in the middle of nowhere, or so it seems to Jason, Black Swan Green is surely the dullest of places to be a thirteen-year-old. But Jason's year is filled with drama - from tangling with his school's band of 'hardknock' bullies to an introduction to European literature from an eccentric Belgian emigré, and news of the Falklands War in the world outside ‒ all played out against the backdrop of his parents' disintegrating marriage.

Each of Black Swan Green's thirteen chapters follows a month in Jason's life, from January 1982 when his sprained ankle is bound up by the witchy crone who lives in the House in the Woods one dark frozen night after skating on the village pond, to January 1983 when the crone is revealed as a harmless old woman now the tenant of her son-in-law's granny flat. Following an episodic form rather than a conventionally linear narrative structure, the novel offers a series of vivid snapshots of Jason's life as he passes the milestone of his thirteenth birthday and begins a journey towards a new, hard-earned maturity.

The protagonist Jason is far from a social pariah but equally far from fitting in to his male classmates. He has vivid imagination, critical thinking and talent for words. To understand all the things to the full extend he has to have first-hand knowledge and, after all, he is capable of making such reasonable and argumentative conclusions that it is hard to believe that a 13-year-old boy is capable of it.

During these 13 months Jason is forced to struggle with the fear of not being accepted into the tribe of hairy barbarians. Already suffering the disadvantage of living in a middle-class enclave, Jason knows that discovery of his stammer will result in merciless persecution. So he has to do his best to conceal it from others. Moreover, he should hide his poetic gift under the same circumstances. Being an artist in a village is a privilege and shame at the same time. Also Jason witnesses the disintegration of his family day after day.

This book is full of examples of the problems teens face. Most of those social problems appear when you are in your youth and never go away afterwards. Overcoming all of these hardships Jason understands things which used to be under the blur of mist. His sister comes up with the idea that it will be all right in the end. Jason says goodbye to his past life and with his head held high steps into unknown future.

This captivating novel, wry, painful and vibrant with the stuff of life made me think of the periodicity of life. At any period of our life we are left to ourselves, even though surrounded by people. The book helped me to find solutions for my every-day problems and feel less alone in the world.