Thursday, April 13, 2006

2006 book 45

david mitchell's black swan green
so, david mitchell is like this amazing author who was totally robbed when that alan hollinghurst book won the booker a couple years back. and this is his new book! it doesn't go for the slightly surreal stories and complicated structure of his last book--it's the story of a thirteen-year-old british kid (and there is lots of wacky british slang) growing up and stuff in 1982. one of the things i like best about mitchell is that, through all of his books, he seems to be developing his own world--there are lots of connections between each of his novels, and this one is no different (some of the main characters in cloud atlas are mentioned here, briefly). ok, so i love mitchell and it's no surprise that i loved this book. however, there are a few things that rang false, like the main character thinking that no one will ever forget the falklands war! i mean, hell, i only know that war happened b/c i have a bunch of old doonesbury books, and i'm not sure i knew argentina played a part at all. and through the whole thing i was sort of like, "what happened to this plotline??" but the end made pretty much everything ok for me.

plus, neko case is tonight, whcih makes everything extra-ok!

3 comments:

Alicia K. said...

well, you should get on that then. :)

pinky pinkerson said...

Cloud Atlas was one of my favorite books - was it last year? the year before? I'll have to read this latest one.

Alicia K. said...

i think it came out in 2004 (here anyway)--but it doesn't feel very long ago! definitely a mitchell fan should check it out. :)