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Neil Jordan

Mistaken Hardcover – January 1, 2011

by Neil Jordan (Author)

45 ratings

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Print length

320 pages
Language

English
Publisher

John Murray Publishers Ltd
Publication date

January 1, 2011
Dimensions

6.06 x 1.1 x 9.49 inches
ISBN-10

1848544189
ISBN-13

978-1848544185
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Product details

Publisher : John Murray Publishers Ltd (January 1, 2011)
Language : English
Hardcover : 320 pages
ISBN-10 : 1848544189
ISBN-13 : 978-1848544185
Item Weight : 1.22 pounds
Dimensions : 6.06 x 1.1 x 9.49 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #12,533,497 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews:
45 ratings

Customer reviews

5 star		53%
4 star		14%
3 star		15%
2 star		5%
1 star		13%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Ciara Winkelmann

Amazon verified purchase

Reviewed in the United States on April 2, 2012

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I did enjoy reading this book but I felt it paced itself wrong. The first half of the story is slow and devoid of much happening then it races to a finish. Not much of the stories content is believable and this took away from the story for me. The Dublin locations we are brought to in this book are very familiar to me and that made an extra character come alive. Overall I felt that Neil Jordan has written a screen play rather than a novel.

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Dozey Dave

Mistaken

Reviewed in the United States on March 2, 2012

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Yeah this was a great read. It had some interesting twists and turns which keeps you tuned in. The fact I'm a Norhsider meant I could identify with places and pubs mentioned. All in all an unusual topic which made a very enjoyable read.

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eilscan

Great read...

Reviewed in the United States on December 6, 2012

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...especially if you're a Dubliner. Builds up well with plenty of twists, not all predictable. I found the ending wonderful.

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Diz

Two as One

Reviewed in the United States on March 24, 2011

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.

5 people found this helpful

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A Reader

Haunting, mournful book

Reviewed in the United States on January 16, 2012

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.

4 people found this helpful

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tram22

Make no mistake, buy it

Reviewed in the United States on August 1, 2012

Mistaken might have been classified under suspense/thriller/mystery, but the, now customary, excellence of Jordan's writing probably elevates it out of 'genre' writing. Not a heart pounding thriller, but a smouldering ember of unease that seeps out of the pages.
Not an easy read, but the best things in life seldom are.

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Top reviews from other countries

M. Hunter

intricate and musical

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 20, 2016

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An interesting and intricate plot, leaving the reader undecided whose is the ultimate responsibility for events, an indecision which is a relief to this reader after far too heavy a diet of thrillers - it's like returning to real life after an evening watching CGI-reliant films. The writing is smoothly musical, a pleasure to the inner ear. It may very well be my own fault that at times I became unsure what time frame we were in and who was speaking (which is why I give it only 4 stars), but then again that may be the author's deliberate intention, in which case I'm happy to be uncertain, and I might give it 5 stars after all. Think I'll let a spin of a coin decide ... just like real life.

Catherine Ann Murdiff

Three Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 29, 2015

Verified Purchase

It was a bit disjointed. I'm not sure he got his point across as was intended.

Keris Nine

Ghosts of the past

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 23, 2010

Vine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )

Neil Jordan is of course better known as a filmmaker, but I sometimes wonder whether he shouldn't receive more credit as a writer. Similar themes appear in both his films and books - coming to an accommodation with the past and with oneself, flawed characters carrying deep secrets, with a hint of supernatural or mysticism perhaps in there - but the material definitely seems to be given a more serious and credible examination in his novels, and - most importantly - it seems to touch on more personal subject matter.

Mistaken is a fine example of Jordan's writing, one that draws on the past, on childhood experiences, on growing up in Dublin in the 1960s, but it's one that, crucially, takes a distanced perspective, as if in awareness of the act of writing inevitably means creating a fiction of one's life. This is very much evident in the book's central conceit, where a young boy named Kevin Thunder, from a modest north Dublin working-class background feels that the has been living in the shadow of another person, a boy who looks exactly like him, Gerry Spain, but who has a more privileged southside upbringing. Being mistaken for someone else initially proves to be an annoyance to Kevin, but it also has its advantages, particularly when it comes to picking up the discarded girlfriends of his double. Inevitably however, the question of understanding one's true identity comes into question, both for Kevin and Gerry, as each of them come to wonder whether there isn't a third person that they have created between them.

That's very much a writer's conceit that has a number of well-known literary precedents from Mark Twain and Edgar Allan Poe to Dostoevsky - several of which are acknowledged in Mistaken - but inevitably, it's given more of a postmodernist spin here (which isn't exactly new either) on the question of identity and the role of the author. As such, home-grown literary giants such as Joyce and Stoker cast a long shadow over the two boys - quite literally in the case Kevin Thunder who grows up in the house next door to where Bram Stoker lived, and is haunted throughout by the shadow of his vampire creation - the division of those influences reflecting the split in the personality of two boys, made one perhaps in the author himself.

Such self-reflexive musings are interesting, but they do not become the overriding purpose of Mistaken, and Jordan finds a way to bring his own unique character to the writing with some beautiful childhood reminiscences of life in Dublin in the sixties (most of the chapter titles refer to Dublin locations). The Neil Jordan touches are there also in the obsessive dwelling on the past, memory, two halves seeking a whole and the skilful way he teases those elements out through an almost supernatural twist. Opening with a funeral, Mistake is also about Death in wider sense - the death of parents and a generation which nonetheless leave ghosts of a past that still haunt and direct the course of our lives.

Despite the clear personal input, the literary nature of the book does perhaps prevent the characters from fully coming to life, but that shouldn't be seen as a criticism, since the whole purpose of Mistaken is to examine "the inadequacies of fiction" in its creation of characters and in the dangerous pursuit of dreaming of another life. Nonetheless, the novel is beautifully written, wonderfully rich in imagery and observations, but also consistent and persuasive in its worldview and, ultimately, despite itself, even quite touching.

6 people found this helpful

DubaiReader

Could have used a bit of editing

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 23, 2013

Vine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )

After a slow start, this book improved considerably. It struck a chord with me as I also have a double, with whom I have frequently been confused. (We eventually met and ultimately our boys ended up at the same schools and became best friends - entierly coincidentally).

Neil Jordan is better known as a film director and producer and as such, I would expect him to be capable of strong flights of imagination - we are not disappointed in Mistaken. The idea of two boys, both growing up in different areas of Dublin in the 60's, yet appearing so alike that they can even fool girl friends, was fascinating for me.

Kevin Thunder lives next door to the house once occupied by Bram Stoker. His is a working class background and it is his story that drives the novel.
Kevin's double, Gerald Spain, hails from a wealthier southside family.
Although they are very different in character and outlook, they are able to pass as one another, which eventually leads to disaster.
The descriptions of Dublin are beautiful, if a bit excessive, and I would imagine this would be a wonderful book for readers from that part of the world.

Mistaken could have benefitted from bit of editing in the first third, possibly by removing some of the more descriptive elements. It had a spooky darkness about it but didn't reach into horror, thankfully.
I haven't read his previous novel, Shade, but I will look out for it - it has been on my Wish List for a while now.

Sid Nuncius

A very rewarding book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 16, 2011

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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. For example, the narrator as a boy in the early 60s catches a bus thus: "...I ran, jumped on to the tailboard, grabbed the rail and climbed the stairs to the upper deck. The cigarette smoke was thick, the windows dripping with condensation...", which really struck a chord with me. I am sure other readers will find flashes of their own past brought vividly to life in the same way, and it 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.

3 people found this helpful

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Mistaken Hardcover – January 1, 2011

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