How long does it take to read Black Swan Green?
Black Swan Green by David Mitchell takes about 7 hours 2 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
About 7 hours 2 minutes
A weekend read
First published 2006. 384 pages, about 105,600 words. Written for young adults.
15 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 11 hours 44 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 7 hours 2 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 4 hours 24 minutes |
The page count is the median across 26 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
A novel. From hardcover: "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. Pointed, funny, profound, left-field, elegiac, and painted with the stuff of life, Black Swan Green is David Mitchell’s most subtlest and effective achievement to date.
Subjects: Boys, Villages, Fiction, England in fiction, Villages in fiction, Boys in fiction
