Black Swan Green

Monday Night Book Discussions

"BLACK SWAN GREEN"
(written by David Mitchell)

Salina Public Library

Salina, KS

© Lydia Lowe  12/09/2013

     I don’t know if I’m just not interested in reading right now (perish the thought, this has NEVER happened to me) or if these last two book club selections just haven’t been all that interesting .  But here we go with another book that just fails to impress me.

     It all comes down to the language.  Usually I’m thrilled to find a book that uses unfamiliar language in unfamiliar ways so that I have to think about what the author is saying.  I love language so this generally pulls me in every time.  The turn of a phrase or an unfamiliar way of looking at things and I’m hooked.  But lately I just want to be able to pick up a book and read it.  I don’t necessarily want to decipher it or learn from it.  I just want to dive in and enter another world for a while and lose myself.  If that’s what you’re looking for, too, this is not the book for you.

     I just couldn’t get into this book.  A coming of age novel set against the backdrop of world events sounds like a terrific start to a novel.  It should have intrigue, mystery, lessons learned through mistakes, close ties formed between the characters in the book, and world events that the reader relates too; all those things.  Possibly it does.  But the language just doesn’t do it for me.  It actually pushes me away and toward other books, any other books.  

     When a book sets itself up in the book blurbs as some spectacular be all end all book, I always get suspicious.  I don’t think that any book is the greatest book ever written (except maybe the Bible).  No book is the be all end all book of all time and any book that’s saying this is a book written by an artist with a huge ego.   Books are wonderful stories crafted by people with a gift for language and all writers think their books are special.  And they are!  But the last book you’ll ever want to read because it’s one of the greatest book of all time, probably not.