books: black swan green

Mind you, I rarely ever cry. I'm just not that sort of girl. But for some reason I've been welling up at the drop of a hat for the past two days. I'm sure that the combination of the heat, being without cable for the past twelve hours and without water for the past fourteen haven't been helping matters, but usually none of these things would be enough to do more than make me mildly annoyed, not reduce me to tears. Nonetheless, an episode of Weeds, an article about the bridge disaster in Minnesota, an article about Michael Vick, and being unable to find the bread in the refrigerator have all been enough to bring tears to these usually dry eyes. It's freaking me out a bit, actually.

But since I've been without so much for so long I've had lots of time to read, and in addition to articles about national disasters and animal cruelty I also managed to finish David Mitchell's Black Swan Green, which - since it is a British coming-of-age story centered around an awkward but awesome boy named Jason Taylor who's just trying to survive adolescence despite a embarrassing studder, his parents' impending divorce and relentless school bullies who've nicknamed him Maggot and mock him at every turn - was sort of a perfect dovetail of everything I love, bookishly speaking.

It's not a sad book exactly, but since I've recently managed to turn into a big cry baby for some reason, here's a passage that nearly reduced me to tears.

School corridors're sort of sinister during classtime. The noisiest spaces're now the silentest. Like a neutron bomb's vaporized human life but let all the buildings standing. These drowned voices you hear aren't coming from classrooms, but through the partitions between life and death. The shortest route to the staff room was the quad, but I took the longer way, via the Old Gym. Teachers' errands're in-between times where no one can hassle you, like Free Parking in Monopoly. I wanted to spin this space out. My feet clomped over the same worn boards boys did somersaults on before they went off to the First World War to be gassed. Stacked chairs block off one wall of the Old Gym, but the other wall's got a wooden frame you can climb. For some reason, I wanted to peer out through the window at the top. It was a minor risk. If I heard footsteps I'd just jump down.

Once you're up there, mind, it's higher than it looks.
Years of muck'd grayed the glass.
The afternoon'd turned to heavy gray.
Too heavy and too gray to not turn into rain. "Moonlight Sonata" orbited out past the tenth planet. Rooks huddled on a drainpipe, watching the school buses lumber into the big front yard. Bolshy, bored, and bargey, like the Upton Punks hanging out by their war memorial.

Once a Maggot, mocked Unborn Twin, always a Maggot.

Points behind my eyes ached with the coming rain.
Friday'd come round, sure. But the moment I get home, the weekend'll begin to die and Monday'll creep nearer, minute by minute. Then it'll be back to five more days like today, worse than today, for worse than today.

Hang yourself.

"Lucky for you," a girl's voice said and I nearly fell fifteen feet to a nest of fractured bones, "I'm not a teacher on patrol, Taylor."

I peered down at Holly Deblin peering up. "S'pose so."

"What're you doing out of class, Taylor?"

"Kempsey sent me to get his whistle." I clambered down. Holly Deblin's only a girl but she's as tall as me. She throws the javelin farther than anyone. "He's doing the bus queues today. Are you feeling better?"

"Just needed to lie down for a bit. How about you? Giving you a hard time, aren't they? Wilcox, Drake, and Brose and them."

No point denying it, but admitting it made it realer.

"They're dickheads, Taylor."
Darkness in the Old Gym smoothed away Holly Deblin's edges.

"Yeah." They are dickheads, but how does that help me?
Was it then that I heard the first tappings of rain?

"You're not a maggot. Don't let dickheads decide who you are."

And now I'm welling up again. I'm being ridiculous, aren't I? Perhaps baby just needs a nap...