Black Swan Green tracks a single year in what is, for thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor, the sleepiest village in muddiest Worcestershire in a dying Cold War England, 1982. But the thirteen chapters, each a short story in its own right, create an exquisitely observed world that is anything but sleepy. A world of Kissingeresque realpolitik enacted in boys’ games on a frozen lake; of “nightcreeping” through the summer backyards of strangers; of the tabloid-fueled thrills of the Falklands War and its human toll; of the cruel, luscious Dawn Madden and her power-hungry boyfriend, Ross Wilcox; of a certain Madame Eva van Outryve de Crommelynck, an elderly bohemian emigré who is both more and less than she appears; of Jason’s search to replace his dead grandfather’s irreplaceable smashed watch before the crime is discovered; of first cigarettes, first kisses, first Duran Duran LPs, and first deaths; of Margaret Thatcher’s recession; of Gypsies camping in the woods and the hysteria they inspire; and, even closer to home, of a slow-motion divorce in four seasons.
Four: A Divergent Collection
Veronica Roth
Harper Collins Publishers Limited
The Reservoir Tapes
Jon Mcgregor
Magic Seeds
V.S. Naipaul
Picador/Pan Macmillan Publishers Limited
Guerrillas
The Mystic Masseur
Mini Shopaholic
Sophie Kinsella
Black Swan/Penguin Random House Group
Slowness
Milan Kundera
Faber & Faber/Penguin Random House Group
Running In The Family
Michael Ondaatje
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Go Set A Watchman
Harper Lee
Arrow Books/Penguin Random House
The Schooldays Of Jesus (Longlisted For The Man Booker Prize 2016)
J.M. Coetzee
Harvill Secker/Penguin Random House Group
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