This book charts thirteen months in the black hole between childhood and adolescence, set against the sunset of an agrarian England still overshadowed by the Cold War It's a dank January in the Worcestershire village of Black Swan Green and thirteen-year-old Jason Taylor - covert stammerer and reluctant poet- anticipates a stultifying year in the deadest village on Earth But Jason hasn't reckoned with a junta of bullies, simmering family discord, the Falklands War, an exotic Belgian emigre, a threatened gypsy invasion and the caprices of those mysterious entities known as girls