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!