The Piles

Just added to-and then immediately extracted from the pile of reading accumulating by my bedside is "Black Swan Green" by David Mitchell. I thought both "Cloud Atlas" and "Ghostwritten" were terrific, though each had a little bit of the air of a parlor trick about them. "Black Swan Green", from the first few pages anyway, seems firmly set in one place and time, with a narrative that simply goes forward-so we'll see what he can do with it.