With his fourth novel, Black Swan Green, David Mitchell has finally given us what many novelists do with their first novel: a story that is set in the writer’s own home turf, or a place much like it, is rooted in autobiography, and is somehow a summary of the writer’s life up until a certain point. Black Swan Green chronicles one year in the life of young Jason Taylor, stammerer, aspiring poet, and middling-popular kid trying to find his way through the complex hierarchies of adolescent society, the minefields of a home where a marriage is slowly going off the rails, and a community where recent arrivals like him are still seen as urbanised interlopers. There’s nothing especially unusual about this story – the fact that Jason is 13-going-on-14, certainly 13 and three-fourths at some point, should tell you that this novel fits into the well-defined and populated subset of coming-of-age novels.

What is unusual is that Mitchell, who dazzled readers with his ambitious structures and interweaving of disparate narrative voices and generic conventions in previous novels, such as Ghostwritten or the Babushka-doll like Cloud Atlas, should choose to tackle such a straightforward narrative after his previous virtuoso displays. It soon becomes clear, however, that Mitchell has not rejected his immense formal and stylistic ability and ambition in this novel – instead, he’s set them in a different key, a pastoral minor as it were, to contrast with the grand symphonic ensemble flourishes of his previous work. His fascination with structure as a narrative device is reflected in the fact that the chapters of this book each deal with just one month in Jason’s year of awakening. Each chapter deals with some important events in that space of time, with the chapter titles referring to a key motif within, and nearly each chapter leaving loose ends that are referred back to in future chapters, with all the loops finally being closed in a last chapter that literally and figuratively revisits the territory of the first. His talent for finally nuanced narrative voices is on display here too – Jason’s own awareness and perception of the world around him slowly evolves as the novel progresses, and Mitchell reflects this in his first-person narrative, subtly at times, and sometimes with a grand flourish, as in a chapter where Jason thrice visits the home of an eccentric Belgian lady who teaches him that poetry should not create beauty, but reflect truth. Jason’s initial descriptions of her home are freighted with a breathless sense of exotica, and then the same settings are successively described in terms that are less aesthetically charged, but truer and therefore more evocative. More subtly, a cousin whom Jason idolizes and tries to emulate at first, is eventually dismissed as ‘smarmy’. Mitchell uses the plasticity of an adolescent’s consciousness to strike a variety of notes, from a Grimm Brothers like fairytale spookiness, through a sort of magic-realist literary awakening to poignant, exquisitely observed realism and satire. Jason and his Shropshire countryside may define the confines of this narrative, but it is clear that both contain many worlds, as diverse as the kaleidoscopic settings of Mitchell’s past work.

Finally, all Mitchell’s novels have some concrete link with each other – a specific character who is, or is connected to, a character in another of his books – that’s the case here, as well. In addition, the song #9dream, the title of an earlier novel by Mitchell, is strategically inserted at a key moment in the narrative – Jason’s first kiss, as a matter of fact.

Even though Black Swan Green isn’t as much of a departure from Mitchell’s previous work as it might seem at first, it still has to sink or swim on its own merits. It succeeds at this task. While Jason might seem at times more insightful than is common at his age, there are enough times when he is merely callow or trite as well, which seems about right for his age. The various characters he interacts with are equally well-realised and believable, and the novel reflects the year it is set in – 1982 – incredibly well, with contemporary politics and pop culture often setting the stage for Jason’s personal experiences. This may not be the most technically dazzling novel I’ve read by Mitchell, but it is as gripping, thoughtful and moving as anything he’s written. Mitchell has shown he can strike gold, or at least silver, in even the most played-out of literary soils, and I can’t wait to see where he chooses to delve next.