You may be shocked to hear this, but I didn’t do a lot of reading over the three-day weekend. Book #4 was David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green. I’ll withhold my opinion until I get a chance to take this up with Megan. Needless to say, my reaction is extremely complicated and requires a good deal of thought. I read this book very slowly for a reason. I’ll only say that I think this novel was definitely the right step forward for Mitchell. But it’s an ambitious attempt that’s definitely going to split readers. I think we’re going to see the same heated and divisive reactions that we saw with Ian McEwan’s Saturday. More to follow.
Category / Mitchell, David
The Chair Update
We are pleased to report that the chair that was wounded during the course of engineering The Bat Segundo Show #16 has been replaced. (We had sentimental attachments for that chair, but it had a solid six year run and it was probably due for a replacement anyway.) The new chair is a large and quite comfy leather chair that we almost fell asleep on yesterday evening. Further, this chair has a five year warranty and reliable casters to boot. In short, the upshot here is that the chair’s comfort and durability (to say nothing of its easy assembly) will likely fuel us for quite some time. (To give you a sense of how nifty this chair is, when you stand up, the cushion emits a noticable whoosh, as if to suggest that it’s had your bottom’s interest at heart all along. How many chairs have the courtesy to do that?) So expect a new Segundo podcast (or two) in the week. We assure you that these are some pretty exciting interviews. Also, Mr. Segundo has been located and he will explain his disappearance in Segundo #17.
Further, we cannot say enough good things about Rupert Thompson’s Divided Thompson, which kept us up until 3:30 AM the other night. While we’re not yet finished with it (though close!), we’re thinking that it might have made our Top 10 List had we read it earlier in the year. If you like your dystopian spec-fic novels sprinkled with goofball humor (we’re talking surfing and pole vaulting, peeps!) and a strange obsession with curlicue imagery, then we whole-heartedly recommend it.
We’ve also dug our claws into Black Swan Green and will have some things to say about that in the emerging week (though, to be perfectly clear, not a review!). Our immediate impression is that this so-called “departure” is probably the right thing for our man, David Mitchell, although we’ll say more once we’ve reached the apex.
Black Swan Green
At the risk of coming across as feverish Harry Knowles types, we have in our hands the galley of David Mitchell’s next novel, Black Swan Green. We cannot confess how we got our hands on this, as several extremely nice people may be incriminated. But we will be taking a spin with Mitchell’s latest opus over the holidays and will attempt to report what we can as soon as we can.
David Mitchell — Red Alert
There are now galleys of it — it being David Mitchell’s new novel.
Since we’re repeatedly on record her as being major David Mitchell fans, since a character devised by Mr. Mitchell did, in fact, inspire our podcast, we’re wondering who we have to blow to get a copy of this.
Mitchell’s next novel is Black Swan Green. It reportedly tells the tale of a 13 year old English boy in 1982. In this interview, we have this information:
In one of the 13 chapters of ‘Black Swan Green’, a major character is a woman in her sixties called Eva van Outryve de Crommmelynck, now an old lady. She’s the daughter of Madam Crommmelynck, wife of Vyvyan Ayrs, who the composer Robert Frobisher, went to stay with in ‘Cloud Atlas’.
In the same section, there’s a very minor character, called Gwendolin Bendincks, who appears in the old folks home in the Timothy Cavendish section, about fifteen, twenty years before Timothy Cavendish meets her. She’s a waspish vicars’ wife in Black Swan Green.
So we have some carryover from Cloud Atlas. Black Swan Green will be composed of 13 chapters, one for each month. The Falklands war factors in. Interestingly enough, each chapter is a short story that Mitchell tried to write independently. In the selfsame interview, the very humble Mitchell remarks that it’s the best thing he’s written.
Some more info on Black Swan Green can be found here from the Oxford Literary Festival, where Mitchell is described as reading two segments from the book for the first time. One was a sex scene and Mitchell, in fact, got a bit embarassed when reading it. But he also asked the audience which version of a sentence they preferred during this reading.
Needless to say, we’re having someone hose us down with cold water tonight.
Mitchell on the Shore
I don’t know how I missed it, but Mitchell takes on Murakami’s latest. Which makes perfect sense, given how much of a fanboy Mitchell in turn is of Murakami! But to be fair, Mitchell quibbles over the homogeneity of Murakami’s tone, pointing the reader to other great Murakami tomes in place of this one. Even so, “respect is due.” (via Tingle Alley)