Mistaken [Paperback]

Neil Jordan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 2011

‘I had been mistaken for him so many times that when I heard he had died it was as if part of myself had died too.’ Kevin Thunder grew up with a double – a boy so uncannily like him that they were mistaken for each other at every turn. As children in 1960s Dublin , one lived next to Bram Stoker’s house, haunted by an imagined Dracula, the other in the more refined spaces of Palmerston Park . Though divided, like the city itself, by background and class, they shared the same smell, the same looks, and perhaps, as he comes to realize, the same soul.   They exchange identities when it suits them, as their lives take them to England and America , and find that taking on another’s personality can lead to darker places than either had imagined.   Neil Jordan’s long-awaited new novel is an extraordinary achievement – a comedy of manners at the same time as a Gothic tragedy, a thriller and an elegy.   It offers imaginative entertainment of the highest order.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Hodder Export (January 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1848544200
• ISBN-13: 978-1848544208
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #963,617 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A very rewarding book, March 17, 2011

By 

Sid Nuncius (London) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mistaken (Paperback)

After finding the first hundred pages hard going in places I enjoyed this book very much. It is a poetic, meditative account of growing up and ageing, the choices we make and those that are made for us and how things might have turned out if either had been different. The book's central idea of the narrator and his double often being mistaken for each other is well developed and ingeniously used to illustrate what Jordan is trying to say about how lives develop, and the later part of the book has a very gripping story.

Neil Jordan has the ability to pick out those few details which capture a scene or an atmosphere perfectly, which is one of the great strengths of the book. I found the events and characters very well-drawn and believable, and Jordan also tells a very good involving story which I found quite heartbreaking in places. My only criticism of this book is that in the first hundred or so pages the fractured, occasionally confusing timescale and the extremely leisurely pace did begin to pall, and I thought the poetic language and descriptions occasionally spilled over into self-indulgence. However, the latter two-thirds of the book are really impressive and enjoyable, and have left me with powerful images and plenty to think about. It's a very rewarding book and even if you find the opening a struggle it is well worth persevering with.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Two as One, March 24, 2011

By 

Diziet "I Like Toast" (Hull, E Yorks, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mistaken (Paperback)

Have you ever read a book that has taken you over? Found yourself walking down the street, describing to yourself what you see from the viewpoint of a character in the book? It happened to me with this.

It is (sometimes rather self-consciously) beautifully written. It is also slow. That slowness builds and builds a world, not especially attractive, low-key, frustrating, but wholly liveable. Dublin homes and schools, London flats and building sites, Los Angeles highways, Manhattan brownstones - the 'action' moves around an atlantic world, but really shifts around the characters' minds.

It's a book about identities and lives. Two people who look similar, and smell the same - smell connects so directly to memory. And they share a life. So is this a life so big that it can hold two? Or are they living half-lives?

It's so convenient - do something stupid, get yourself involved too far, lack the courage to state your feelings; no problem, recruit your proxy self. But what happens when that proxy prefers your life? And what happens if you prefer theirs? Two people shifting the narrative of their life between them. At times, one takes advantage, seemly almost parasitic, vampiric. Living next door to old Bram Stoker's house, his ghost haunts more than the home.

So it's a book about two men who look very similar and often get mistaken for each other. They share lovers, they share houses, they share a life. Really, the life is more like a single track, the trains keep changing. But within that rather slim premise, the moody prose builds with an almost ocean-like swell to deliver a low-key but bloody denouement, finally winding down with a fatalistic murmur.

It's dream-like, it's an interior world, never mind the jetting back and forth across continents. And it really creeps up and holds you. You need to put a bit of work in, but it well repays the effort. It will stay with you, I think.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Haunting, mournful book, January 16, 2012

By 

A Reader (Oregon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mistaken (Paperback)

I've never read anything by Neil Jordan although I'm a fan of his films. I'm a big fan of Irish writing though, so when I saw this in the bookstore I grabbed it. The writing is not as lyrical as many Irish authors I'm fond of, and the story at times feels a little bit hackneyed, but there's also something mysterious in it that I liked, an undercurrent of loss that compelled me (I'm a sucker for that kind of thing, probably why I love Irish writers). I saw the 'reveal' a mile away, I'm sure other readers have as well, but it didn't matter since I wanted to know what would happen to the characters regardless. Not a lot happens but there's an intertwining that's very lovely by the end. Probably not on my list of big favorites but it held me.