January Man

I found myself having to reread the first several pages of “Black Swan Green” because of the colloquial language and Mitchell’s play with punctuation/form. I was asking myself who is this narrator and why I am having so much difficulty with this text? The novel is written in English but I am learning new words and idioms. In addition, there are many political and British pop culture references that I’m completely ignorant about. I felt similar to when I read Salman Rushdie for the first time because I was completely oblivious to a specific culture and its history. Nor am I familiar with how teenagers speak from England, specifically the West Midlands of England. But after reading the text aloud, I’m growing accustomed to Jason’s vernacular and slang.

I slowly warmed up to Mitchell’s novel. Jason resonated with me because of how funny and ordinary his life is. His bland and unremarkable name, Jason Taylor, says it all. I enjoyed Jason’s monologue when he decides not to correct Ross Wilcox: “I was dying to tell that prat that actually, if the Japanese hadn’t bombed Pearl Harbor, America’d never’ve come into the war, Britain’d’ve been starved into surrender, and Winston’s Churchill’d’ve been executed as a war criminal. But I knew I couldn’t (10). Jason feels somewhat ostracized, caught in limbo between the ‘cool’ kids and the ‘losers.’ I am reminded of Holden Caulfield in “Catcher in the Rye.” But I have a feeling that I’ll enjoy Black Swan Green more. I’m intrigued and curious about Jason’s father’s secret and who is calling him? And who is this enigmatic, old lady and her cryptic brother living in a cottage in the woods?