Black Swan Green is a semi-autobiographical novel written by David Mitchell, published in April 2006 in the U.S. and May 2006 in the UK. The bildungsroman's thirteen chapters each represent one month—from January 1982 through January 1983—in the life of 13-year-old Worcestershire boy Jason Taylor. The novel is written from the perspective of Taylor and employs many teen colloquialisms and popular-culture references from early-1980s England. Mitchell has the speech disorder of stammering, and noted in 2011, "I'd probably still be avoiding the subject today had I not outed myself by writing a semi-autobiographical novel, Black Swan Green, narrated by a stammering 13 year old." Plot summary Chapter 1: January man Jason Taylor is a 13-year-old with a stammer in the small village of Black Swan Green in Worcestershire. The first chapter starts with a rule Jason's father has: "Do not set foot in my office" and Jason breaking that rule to pick up the phone. It also introduces Jason's older sister Julia, friend Dean "Moron" Moran, popular boy Nick Yew, Gilbert "Yardy" Swinyard, Ross Wilcox and his cousin Gary Drake, golden boy student Neal Brose, tomboy Dawn Madden, Mervyn "Squelch" Hill, bully Grant Burch, local legend Tom Yew and "less shiny legend" Pluto Noak. Jason secretly publishes his poems in the Black Swan Green Parish magazine under the alias "Eliot Bolivar". Jason breaks his grandfather's expensive Omega Seamaster de Ville watch. Also, after an accident on an iced-over lake, he meets a mysterious old woman rumoured to be a witch. Chapter 2: Hangman Jason goes into more detail about his struggles with stammering. He then explains how his stammers affect his relationships with other people. He refers to this mental block as "hangman". He's scared to stand up and speak during the school's weekly rhetoric session, but is saved by a call from his South African speech therapist, Mrs. de Roo. He calls his stammer "Hangman" Chapter 3: Relatives Introduces Jason's relatives who come for a visit, including cool, 15-year-old cousin Hugo Lamb (who reappears in Mitchell's later novel The Bone Clocks), who pressures Jason to try his first cigarette. Chapter 4: Bridle path Jason is attacked by dobermans and scolded by their owner. When he comes across he meets his classmates Kit Harris, Grant Burch, Philip Phelps and Ant Little. A fight between Burch and Wilcox ends with the former breaking his right wrist. Jason encounters Dawn Madden, a