Black Swan Green / David Mitchell 294 pp.

I wrote a cranky review of Mitchell's 2014 The Bone Clocks.  It's a relief to realize that I can still consider Mitchell a favorite following my reading of his 2006 Black Swan Green.  There's no time travel or redacted memory here, just a year in the life of a middle-class English 13-year-old boy, which I oddly find much more exciting.  Jason Taylor stammers, is bright and sensitive, and not surprisingly, he becomes the target of bullies.  Add to that his parents' failing marriage and a sociopath cousin (Hugo Lamb, who plays a major role in Bone Clocks), and you have a year rich in incident and beautifully observed.  'Hangman,' the chapter devoted explicitly to Jason's stammer, its treatment and effects, should be required reading for all who work with differently-abled children.  (Make that all who work with children, period.)  Mitchell captures perfectly something I rarely see; that is, he reminds us that childhood sometimes is just plain terrifying.  Nothing supernatural required.