http://www.edrants.com/75-books-book-4/ a blog in ever-shifting standing Sat, 21 Nov 2009 16:15:38 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 http://www.edrants.com/75-books-book-4/comment-page-1/#comment-6624 Paul Kincaid Tue, 07 Feb 2006 16:55:01 +0000 http://www.edrants.com/?p=2587#comment-6624 I've just read <i>Black Swan Green</i> myself - my reaction is <a href="http://peake.livejournal.com/62680.html" rel="nofollow">here</a> – and agree that it is ambitious, and also feel that it establishes literary skills that haven't necessarily been evident in the style of fiction he's chosen to write before this, notably a sustained narrative voice. But I do wonder whether you are right that it will split readers. Anyone expecting another <i>Cloud Atlas</i> will probably be disappointed, but I'm not convinced that many people would be reading him in the expectation that he would repeat himself. Surely the split over <i>Saturday</i> was largely political rather than literary, and I don't think the political content of <i>Black Swan Green</i>, over the Falklands War for instance, would have the same response because it is so clearly filtered through the 13-year-old perspective of the narrator. (Mind you, I saw the political content of <i>Saturday</i> as McEwan's way of showing us into the mind of Perowne, but many readers seemed to take it straight.) I’ve just read Black Swan Green myself – my reaction is here – and agree that it is ambitious, and also feel that it establishes literary skills that haven’t necessarily been evident in the style of fiction he’s chosen to write before this, notably a sustained narrative voice. But I do wonder whether you are right that it will split readers. Anyone expecting another Cloud Atlas will probably be disappointed, but I’m not convinced that many people would be reading him in the expectation that he would repeat himself. Surely the split over Saturday was largely political rather than literary, and I don’t think the political content of Black Swan Green, over the Falklands War for instance, would have the same response because it is so clearly filtered through the 13-year-old perspective of the narrator. (Mind you, I saw the political content of Saturday as McEwan’s way of showing us into the mind of Perowne, but many readers seemed to take it straight.)

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