Reviews

Dertien by David Mitchell

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dunnadam's review against another edition

2.0

Just not really my thing. The first chapter was weird and ended with something supernatural (a blizzard rushing out of her black cracked mouth) and then that was never mentioned again. Chapter two was good with the main character more set in focus and a tale of a stutter or stammer that causes him embarrassment.
As the chapters go on there is great moments of adolescent wonderment, as when he’s over at a woman’s house and she doesn’t answer her phone (“My parents’d run into a burning asbestos mine if they thought there was a phone in there ringing for them.”) Lots of sarcasm. It just gets hidden by a confusing meandering story that is more like a series of short vignettes than a singular narrative.
There’s quintessentially British problems from the period such as the Falklands war that I couldn’t relate to and a casual homophobia that I remembered from the period but don’t really want to remember (“But not having a girlfriend means you’re a homo of a total loser or both.”)
Without a stronger singular purpose or a more likable narrator I had a hard time keeping focus and wanted to rush through the book to the end so I could move on. The last chapter was a bit better in that something happened, which can’t be said of all the chapters.
Looking back now I’m remembering good parts and thinking it wasn’t so bad but while I was reading it I wanted it to be over.

paola_mobileread's review against another edition

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2.0

My problem with this book is that I never bought the child's voice, and it's philosophysing irritated me most times.
Yes, it is very possible that a child can produce sentences like

Green is made of yellow and blue, nothing else, but when you look at green, where’ve the yellow and the blue gone? Somehow this is to do with Moran’s dad. Somehow this is to do with everyone and everything

(when referring to his friend Moran's alcoholic dad),

(Often I think boys don’t become men. Boys just get papier-mâchéd inside a man’s mask. Sometimes you can tell the boy is still in there.

A bride and groom pose outside a flinty chapel. Bare twigs say it’s winter. The groom’s thin lips say, Look what I’ve got. A top hat, a cane, half fox. But the bride’s half lioness. Her smile’s the idea of a smile. She knows more about her new husband than he knows about her.

Hate doesn't need a why. Who or even what is ample

and so on - yes, maybe a child could write this, but as I know it is an adult writing, it sounds very fake, at least to my ears. Also, it is inconsistent - on the one hand some characters come out completely flat, which you may justify as seen through Jason's adolescent eyes, which then does not square with more perceptive descriptions and observations.
Towards the end it really becomes soppy - it also felt this novel missed an opportunity to deal with bullying more subtly. In the end, Jason, the main character and narrating voice, finds the strength to react and the baddies pay, either because they bring it on themselves (the arch nasty Ross Wilcox) or because the Cavalry comes to the rescue (Mr. Nixon, Jason's school Headmaster) - but there is a sense in which Jason had been just the wrong target, as bullies will pick on those who are unable to defend themselves or react.
It may have been more interesting if the central character had been one of the persecutor's sidekicks for instance. Other characters I also found not convincing and somewhat unidimensional, from Madame Crommelynck who confesses her own inner thoughts and fears to this incredibly perceptive 13 year old, to the pure evil of Ross Wilcox and Grant Burch.
It felt like a storyline from the Waltons, with Jason as the local John-boy. Still, there are aspects to enjoy in this book, and the story does flow, and offers a kitchen table perspective on British society in the 80's for those who were not there.

augustinianseptember's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

outcolder's review against another edition

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5.0

i cried at least once per chapter. i grabbed it because i'd loved cloud atlas so much, but this is a very different book, even if a cloud atlas character pops up almost randomly in it. this is a pretty straight forward coming of age story about a 13 year old boy in a crummy part of england during the falklands war. it's got a great bunch of gypsy characters in it, though, and i'm a sucker for gypsy characters. it maybe helped that i was also 13 in the early 80s, but unfortunately in new jersey where the only romanies are very assimilated.

jennjennsan's review against another edition

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3.0

I liked the book’s storyline and all. It was very hard getting around the slang and lingo as an American though. I definitely stumbled through a lot of it and for this reason I probably would rate it a little less than 4 stars but it was a good book overall.

da_bos's review against another edition

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4.0

I wasn't thirteen in 1982 and didn't have a stammer. And I didn't grow up in Britain, obviously. But as I was reading Black Swan Green, I couldn't help but feel that I knew Jason Taylor only too well -- in a lot of ways, he is me when I was that age. Perhaps that's the main reason why I really enjoyed Black Swan Green. Yet the novel has many other qualities, too: It has a well-conceived plot that leaves you satisfied with what happens without feeling you already knew pages in advance that this was what was going to happen. It has well-drawn characters that appear realistic and multilayered. And it is composed in beautiful prose without coming across unnecessarily "artsy."

That said, Black Swan Green is a classic coming-of-age story, a Bildungsroman, as the Germans would say. It follows the conventions of the genre (except perhaps for the ending), and it does so well. But coming-of-age stories are not necessarily everyone's favorite, so if you are not fond of this kind of story, you may want to stay away from it and read something else by David Mitchell (although, since since was the first and so far only of his books I've read, I wouldn't know which to recommend; I've only heard they're good). If you are, like me, open to the genre, you should give Black Swan Green a closer look.