Straining to give voice to adolescence

Black Swan Green, by David Mitchell, Sceptre, €15.

If David Mitchell were a less audacious, less ambitious writer, this might have been his first rather than his fourth novel. Compared to Cloud Atlas, his last book, Black Swan Green may sound a little tame. Set in South Worcestershire during 1982, it’s more sedentary and more structurally conventional than the dazzling Russian Doll of six interlocking novellas that had readers and critics talking in ...