Jason doing all sorts of things from creeping in the darkness through neighbor’s yards with a young crony, to visiting Gypsies and witnessing his first look at predjuice, to coping with the Falkland War and then watching his own family fall apart around him
David Mtichell fans will also be excited to know that a character from his previous novel CLOUD ATLAS reappears a lot older and a whole lot wiser. She, Madame Eva, becomes Jason’s guide and teacher in a very odd sort of way. But readers of CLOUD ATLAS will be happy to see that the
musical rythyms and continuations, the themes, that so wove in and out of that previous novel harmonically continue in this next work. Only to her can Jason admit that the popular and anonymous poet in the newspaper is him and what Art means to him although Jason himself is unsure of his feelings.
Hangman and Unborn Twin are central to Jason’s concerns throughout the book. Hangman is the entity he envisions in charge of his stuttering problem. Many times he is forced to choose a word that doesn’t quite fit because the best-fit word would cause him to reveal his speech impediment. Thus 
Hangman becomes his daily adversary forcing him into being always at one remove from quite making full contact with the spontaneity of expression that he sees all around himself. Unborn Twin is sometimes his better side, sometimes a built-in counter-dialogue. Between Hangman and Unborn Twin, Jason is certainly a student of his own Life.
Hangman becomes his daily adversary forcing him into being always at one remove from quite making full contact with the spontaneity of expression that he sees all around himself. Unborn Twin is sometimes his better side, sometimes a built-in counter-dialogue. Between Hangman and Unborn Twin, Jason is certainly a student of his own Life.Jason confronts the horror of Death via the Falkland War. Many of the older boys join up to fight. The War becomes an express ticket to the Truth of what living really means. But there are not simply the worldwide horrors of the human condition that Jason must face, there are also the simple and yet sanguine horrors of any childhood. There’s always Hangman threatening to kill his popularity. But there is also the stuff that happens to us all, the horror of being seen in line by your buddies standing behind your Mom. But Horror, or Love, all is Truth.
As Madame Eva says: “True poetry is truth. Truth is not popular, so poetry also is not.... Truth is everywhere, like seeds of trees; even deceits contain elements of truth. But the eye is clouded by the quotidian, by prejudice, by worryings, scandal, predation, passion, ennui, and, worst, television.”
It’s a good read, watching Jason uncover so many forms of the Truth.
BLACK SWAN GREEN by David Mitchell is published by Random House. $23.95 Hardcover.
