"Great Britain's Catcher in the Rye": Black Swan Green
There is a quote that says, "inspiration lies in the pages". Well for me it didn't. I actually found inspiration for this blog post on the back cover. There, I noticed a review by Kirkus Reviews calling David Mitchell's Black Swan Green , "Great Britain's Catcher in the Rye-". Conveniently having just read J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye earlier this year, I was inspired to trace the parallels between the two stories and the coming of age of their individual protagonists, Holden Caulfield and Jason Taylor. While the stories take place literally an ocean apart, these two young protagonists share coming of age stories that feels parallel and environments that remind of each other. Jason and Holden are both in a similar type of social environment, a hierarchical order of teenage school boys whose goals are to gain power among themselves. Both boys are in the lesser powered group of people, but for different reasons. Holden is a lot more jud...