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Mistaken
'I had been mistaken for him so many times that when he 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.
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.
391 pages
First published January 1, 2011
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March 22, 2011
Neil Jordan is a man of many talents - director of fantastic films such as The Crying Game and Mona Lisa as well as a successful novelist. I really enjoyed Shade, his last novel published in 2005 so I'd been eagerly anticipating the appearance of Mistaken.
Mistaken begins with the funeral of Gerald Spain, once a successful author, who died suddenly in his mid fifties. Our narrator, Kevin Thunder, was frequently mistaken for Gerald in his younger days, given their strong ressemblance. Physically similar, the two men come from contrasting backgrounds, Kevin hails from Dublin's Northside, an only child whose home is also a boarding house; Gerald comes from the more affluent Southside, Palmerston Park. As Kevin's story unfolds he gradually realises that he has a doppleganger out there, a situation which can have both pros and cons.
The boys move to and fro, with chance encounters, mistaken identities in a type of macabre dance. Kevin envies Gerald's money and social class and feels like a shadow-being, perhaps some sort of vampire feeding off his double's apparent glamour. It's quite appropriate then that Kevin lives next door to the house where Bram Stoker spent his childhood. The notion of a partial existence, of a life half lived, of regrets is echoed in the presence of a shadowy figure who seems to haunt Kevin - is this a figment of his imagination or a real threat?
Mistaken is an intense novel which requires the full concentration of the reader. Even though it crosses time and continents, it remains a Dublin novel, with many chapter titles referring to different locations in the city. It's a novel about loss and regret which makes you wonder about what other lives you might have led, given a second chance. It's a very atmospheric and evocative read and one which I highly recommend.
Mistaken begins with the funeral of Gerald Spain, once a successful author, who died suddenly in his mid fifties. Our narrator, Kevin Thunder, was frequently mistaken for Gerald in his younger days, given their strong ressemblance. Physically similar, the two men come from contrasting backgrounds, Kevin hails from Dublin's Northside, an only child whose home is also a boarding house; Gerald comes from the more affluent Southside, Palmerston Park. As Kevin's story unfolds he gradually realises that he has a doppleganger out there, a situation which can have both pros and cons.
The boys move to and fro, with chance encounters, mistaken identities in a type of macabre dance. Kevin envies Gerald's money and social class and feels like a shadow-being, perhaps some sort of vampire feeding off his double's apparent glamour. It's quite appropriate then that Kevin lives next door to the house where Bram Stoker spent his childhood. The notion of a partial existence, of a life half lived, of regrets is echoed in the presence of a shadowy figure who seems to haunt Kevin - is this a figment of his imagination or a real threat?
Mistaken is an intense novel which requires the full concentration of the reader. Even though it crosses time and continents, it remains a Dublin novel, with many chapter titles referring to different locations in the city. It's a novel about loss and regret which makes you wonder about what other lives you might have led, given a second chance. It's a very atmospheric and evocative read and one which I highly recommend.
February 9, 2017
My review of Mistaken, published in The Stinging Fly:
When Neil Jordan’s collection Night in Tunisia was published thirty-five years ago, Sean O’Faolain wrote: ‘if he keeps and develops his primal gifts… he will become an outstanding writer.’ With the publication of his fifth novel, Mistaken, it’s clear that Jordan has indeed become the outstanding writer O’Faolain foresaw. Formally a first-person remembrance addressed to a female ‘you’, the new novel adopts the narrative strategy of ‘A Love’, the final story of the Night in Tunisia collection. Taken together, Jordan’s five novels to date range over one hundred years of Dublin history, and all investigate the complex relationship between memory, imagination and identity.
Midway through Mistaken, Kevin Thunder, the narrator, describes his talent as a draftsman: ‘I could reconstruct the dimensions of a space from the remains of any significant detail. Original plans were a help, but even in the absence of them I could close my eyes and see the skeleton of the original structure. Like a ghost from the past reasserting itself on the present, I could sketch what was once there.’ It’s a fair summary of the concern with the spectral city that runs through all of Jordan’s fiction. It might serve as a warning, however, that any attempt to recreate the past will necessarily be subject to the vicissitudes of memory and imagination. The closing words of the novel assert as much: ‘… memories are unreliable, and strangely pleasurable, one can wallow in them, invent a detail. Sometimes an afternoon goes by and I look at two typed pages and wonder, whose life was that?’ Significantly, while one double in Mistaken writes novels of dubious integrity about rural Ireland, the other becomes wealthy creating fictional cities for arcade games.
Thunder has grown up in 14 Marino Crescent, next door to the house where Bram Stoker was born, and his childhood dreams are vampire-haunted. In another Gothic turn, Thunder is constantly ‘mistaken’ for a doppelganger, Gerry Spain, a confusion that forms the driving force of the novel. But just as the vampire morphs into a dodgy character in a coat who follows the boyhood narrator into a cinema, Jordan finally opts for a plausible explanation for the uncanny existence of the narrator’s double. In one memorable image, Thunder describes the city as a sphinx, with Howth and Bray Heads the beast’s outstretched paws. If this sphinx has a riddle, then, as in Oedipus, it’s one centred upon identity. Like Oedipus, the adopted son must embark on a search for origins which leads inexorably to the birth-mother. What’s characteristic of Jordan’s writing is that this encounter with the maternal is haunted by the uncanny, with the decrepit mother’s twin arriving as if stepping from a mirror. Each old woman leans on a stick, like the three-legged creature of the sphinx’s riddle.
Donal Gore, the narrator of Sunrise with Sea Monster (1995), grew up in the house directly adjoining James Joyce’s childhood address which makes it inevitable that critics reach for Joyce when considering Jordan’s oeuvre. However, Jordan’s writing displays none of the baroque exuberance of Ulysses; its restraint is characterised instead by that ‘scrupulous meanness’ which Joyce set himself for the stories of Dubliners (always provided we remember that meanness here denotes averageness). Perhaps to pre-empt lazy comparisons with Ulysses, one of the few references to Joyce in Mistaken refers to 16th June 1904 as the day in which he was ‘frigged’ by Nora Barnacle! Jordan is admirably precise in his language. Dublin buses ‘judder,’ the sound of rats over the roof is ‘a kind of pitter-patter with a slithering intent,’ while an entire, horrific history is conjured up in the image of Christian Brothers pacing an exam hall, ‘their leathers hanging by their side like enormous sexual organs.’
The past has as much reality as the present throughout Mistaken, and may indeed be resurrected—Thunder’s memory-novel is being written in an attic cluttered with clocks which uncannily come to life when the narrator’s niece, the ‘you’ to whom the writing is addressed, first enters. In Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu, Marcel’s memories are famously triggered by the taste of a Madeleine cake. Mary cakes play a comparable role in Mistaken, though it’s crucial to understanding Jordan’s purpose here that the memories the cake evokes in both Kevin Thunder and Gerry Spain, his privileged ‘double’, are largely spurious. ‘But memories are unreliable,’ writes Thunder, and it’s a source of fascination how teasingly unreliable the minutely detailed evocations of the city can be. Can Bray be glimpsed from Dun Laoghaire pier? Are Belvedere blazers grey? Are the Turners housed in the Municipal Gallery? In which Bewley’s are there Harry Clarke windows? Would an adolescent girl learn about sex from Mandy and Judy? Surely the Teachers Club is in Parnell Square? The intrusive meticulousness in regard to location is of course Thunder’s rather than Jordan’s, and informs his character much as the minute attention to fashion indicates the lack of interior life of Patrick Bateman, the cipher who narrates Brett Easton Ellis’s American Psycho. Indeed, Thunder’s precision in regard to fashion (one remembers the Cuban heels that so impress the adolescent) and music (another leitmotif of identity throughout Jordan’s fiction) comes to define him for the reader.
Throughout, Jordan’s intention in Mistaken is existential rather than Gothic, though it wears its philosophical underpinnings lightly. The motif of presence versus absence is suggested when the narrator spies on Dominique shoplifting in Hodges Figgis, and intuits from an empty space on a bookshelf that the book lifted was (what else?) Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. Elsewhere, indeterminacy in the form of Schrödinger’s cat puts in a brief appearance, though quantum physics rapidly changes into QANTAS. (Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle makes a comparable appearance in Sunrise with Seamonster.) The lack of insistence that underlies such episodes is characteristic of Jordan at his best.
The main resonance of the Stoker address is presumably that vampires are shadow creatures lacking in identity who feed parasitically on the living for lifeblood. Throughout Mistaken, Thunder and Gerry Spain feed insidiously on each other’s identities—Spain even uses Kevin Thunder as his pen name. In one cinematographic image, Thunder sees his reflected face superimposed on a computer-screen image of Spain’s ageing face, like a Dorian Gray from cyberspace.
Mirrors and reflections play a considerable part in the novel. From the novel’s opening at Spain’s graveside, we are aware that the interaction between the doppelgangers can only end badly, and, without giving the end away, the violent climax is prefigured when Thunder catches a glimpse of ‘a mirror fracturing our bodies’ on the way up to the fatal flat. But the violence has already been awoken in the horrific assault on the unfortunate Darragh (what’s in a name?) when she mistakenly links up with Gerry rather than Kevin. The portrait of her complex, fragile personality is a particularly fine and moving achievement.
To an extent, the doubling at the heart of the novel is a device which allows Jordan to explore the multiple-personality of a schizoid city. While the narrator grows up in Marino, attends the CBS and goes to Bolton Street, his twin grows up in Palmerston Park, attends Belvedere and goes to Trinity. However, Mistaken is nowhere marred by the obvious caricatures that populate so much Irish fiction purporting to deal with class. Thus it’s Gerald rather than Kevin who skips bus fares, ‘jiggers’ the amusements, smokes and shoplifts. The Dublin of Mistaken is a nuanced portrait, more likely to focus on the shades of difference between the two Bewley’s Oriental Cafés than the tired Northside-Southside divide. Indeed, the divide between past and present is more pertinent and persistent than any defined by the Liffey. Refreshing too is the lack of misogyny attending the description of the privileged Dominique (Spain’s Trinity girlfriend), whose portrait is drawn as sympathetically as that of tragic Darragh (Thunder’s Bolton Street girlfriend). This is all the more remarkable when one considers the class background and sexual opportunism of the narrator. Mistaken has already been (predictably) dubbed Jordan’s love letter to the city. More accurately, it’s a love letter to the many troubled shades that haunt memory.
When Neil Jordan’s collection Night in Tunisia was published thirty-five years ago, Sean O’Faolain wrote: ‘if he keeps and develops his primal gifts… he will become an outstanding writer.’ With the publication of his fifth novel, Mistaken, it’s clear that Jordan has indeed become the outstanding writer O’Faolain foresaw. Formally a first-person remembrance addressed to a female ‘you’, the new novel adopts the narrative strategy of ‘A Love’, the final story of the Night in Tunisia collection. Taken together, Jordan’s five novels to date range over one hundred years of Dublin history, and all investigate the complex relationship between memory, imagination and identity.
Midway through Mistaken, Kevin Thunder, the narrator, describes his talent as a draftsman: ‘I could reconstruct the dimensions of a space from the remains of any significant detail. Original plans were a help, but even in the absence of them I could close my eyes and see the skeleton of the original structure. Like a ghost from the past reasserting itself on the present, I could sketch what was once there.’ It’s a fair summary of the concern with the spectral city that runs through all of Jordan’s fiction. It might serve as a warning, however, that any attempt to recreate the past will necessarily be subject to the vicissitudes of memory and imagination. The closing words of the novel assert as much: ‘… memories are unreliable, and strangely pleasurable, one can wallow in them, invent a detail. Sometimes an afternoon goes by and I look at two typed pages and wonder, whose life was that?’ Significantly, while one double in Mistaken writes novels of dubious integrity about rural Ireland, the other becomes wealthy creating fictional cities for arcade games.
Thunder has grown up in 14 Marino Crescent, next door to the house where Bram Stoker was born, and his childhood dreams are vampire-haunted. In another Gothic turn, Thunder is constantly ‘mistaken’ for a doppelganger, Gerry Spain, a confusion that forms the driving force of the novel. But just as the vampire morphs into a dodgy character in a coat who follows the boyhood narrator into a cinema, Jordan finally opts for a plausible explanation for the uncanny existence of the narrator’s double. In one memorable image, Thunder describes the city as a sphinx, with Howth and Bray Heads the beast’s outstretched paws. If this sphinx has a riddle, then, as in Oedipus, it’s one centred upon identity. Like Oedipus, the adopted son must embark on a search for origins which leads inexorably to the birth-mother. What’s characteristic of Jordan’s writing is that this encounter with the maternal is haunted by the uncanny, with the decrepit mother’s twin arriving as if stepping from a mirror. Each old woman leans on a stick, like the three-legged creature of the sphinx’s riddle.
Donal Gore, the narrator of Sunrise with Sea Monster (1995), grew up in the house directly adjoining James Joyce’s childhood address which makes it inevitable that critics reach for Joyce when considering Jordan’s oeuvre. However, Jordan’s writing displays none of the baroque exuberance of Ulysses; its restraint is characterised instead by that ‘scrupulous meanness’ which Joyce set himself for the stories of Dubliners (always provided we remember that meanness here denotes averageness). Perhaps to pre-empt lazy comparisons with Ulysses, one of the few references to Joyce in Mistaken refers to 16th June 1904 as the day in which he was ‘frigged’ by Nora Barnacle! Jordan is admirably precise in his language. Dublin buses ‘judder,’ the sound of rats over the roof is ‘a kind of pitter-patter with a slithering intent,’ while an entire, horrific history is conjured up in the image of Christian Brothers pacing an exam hall, ‘their leathers hanging by their side like enormous sexual organs.’
The past has as much reality as the present throughout Mistaken, and may indeed be resurrected—Thunder’s memory-novel is being written in an attic cluttered with clocks which uncannily come to life when the narrator’s niece, the ‘you’ to whom the writing is addressed, first enters. In Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu, Marcel’s memories are famously triggered by the taste of a Madeleine cake. Mary cakes play a comparable role in Mistaken, though it’s crucial to understanding Jordan’s purpose here that the memories the cake evokes in both Kevin Thunder and Gerry Spain, his privileged ‘double’, are largely spurious. ‘But memories are unreliable,’ writes Thunder, and it’s a source of fascination how teasingly unreliable the minutely detailed evocations of the city can be. Can Bray be glimpsed from Dun Laoghaire pier? Are Belvedere blazers grey? Are the Turners housed in the Municipal Gallery? In which Bewley’s are there Harry Clarke windows? Would an adolescent girl learn about sex from Mandy and Judy? Surely the Teachers Club is in Parnell Square? The intrusive meticulousness in regard to location is of course Thunder’s rather than Jordan’s, and informs his character much as the minute attention to fashion indicates the lack of interior life of Patrick Bateman, the cipher who narrates Brett Easton Ellis’s American Psycho. Indeed, Thunder’s precision in regard to fashion (one remembers the Cuban heels that so impress the adolescent) and music (another leitmotif of identity throughout Jordan’s fiction) comes to define him for the reader.
Throughout, Jordan’s intention in Mistaken is existential rather than Gothic, though it wears its philosophical underpinnings lightly. The motif of presence versus absence is suggested when the narrator spies on Dominique shoplifting in Hodges Figgis, and intuits from an empty space on a bookshelf that the book lifted was (what else?) Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. Elsewhere, indeterminacy in the form of Schrödinger’s cat puts in a brief appearance, though quantum physics rapidly changes into QANTAS. (Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle makes a comparable appearance in Sunrise with Seamonster.) The lack of insistence that underlies such episodes is characteristic of Jordan at his best.
The main resonance of the Stoker address is presumably that vampires are shadow creatures lacking in identity who feed parasitically on the living for lifeblood. Throughout Mistaken, Thunder and Gerry Spain feed insidiously on each other’s identities—Spain even uses Kevin Thunder as his pen name. In one cinematographic image, Thunder sees his reflected face superimposed on a computer-screen image of Spain’s ageing face, like a Dorian Gray from cyberspace.
Mirrors and reflections play a considerable part in the novel. From the novel’s opening at Spain’s graveside, we are aware that the interaction between the doppelgangers can only end badly, and, without giving the end away, the violent climax is prefigured when Thunder catches a glimpse of ‘a mirror fracturing our bodies’ on the way up to the fatal flat. But the violence has already been awoken in the horrific assault on the unfortunate Darragh (what’s in a name?) when she mistakenly links up with Gerry rather than Kevin. The portrait of her complex, fragile personality is a particularly fine and moving achievement.
To an extent, the doubling at the heart of the novel is a device which allows Jordan to explore the multiple-personality of a schizoid city. While the narrator grows up in Marino, attends the CBS and goes to Bolton Street, his twin grows up in Palmerston Park, attends Belvedere and goes to Trinity. However, Mistaken is nowhere marred by the obvious caricatures that populate so much Irish fiction purporting to deal with class. Thus it’s Gerald rather than Kevin who skips bus fares, ‘jiggers’ the amusements, smokes and shoplifts. The Dublin of Mistaken is a nuanced portrait, more likely to focus on the shades of difference between the two Bewley’s Oriental Cafés than the tired Northside-Southside divide. Indeed, the divide between past and present is more pertinent and persistent than any defined by the Liffey. Refreshing too is the lack of misogyny attending the description of the privileged Dominique (Spain’s Trinity girlfriend), whose portrait is drawn as sympathetically as that of tragic Darragh (Thunder’s Bolton Street girlfriend). This is all the more remarkable when one considers the class background and sexual opportunism of the narrator. Mistaken has already been (predictably) dubbed Jordan’s love letter to the city. More accurately, it’s a love letter to the many troubled shades that haunt memory.
February 7, 2011
A novel about two Irish boys who bear a physical resemblance to each other. They grow up in Dublin of the 1960s and from there the story goes on its journey.
I liked this book and the story but found the first 100 pages tedious and dark,the book did pick up pace in the second half and is quite enjoyable.
I liked this book and the story but found the first 100 pages tedious and dark,the book did pick up pace in the second half and is quite enjoyable.
August 27, 2011
Kevin Thunder is a young boy, growing up on the Northside of Dublin next door to Bram Stoker’s house, when he discovers he has a double. A double with whom he doesn’t only share his looks but it seems also a certain smell and maybe even his soul.
And before long he starts taking advantage of this resemblance especially when it comes to girls.
When Kevin and his double, Gerald Spain, meet up, the exchanging identities for various purposes is at first almost a game, something to make their lives easier, to achieve things they feel they can’t do as themselves.
But, what starts out as a bit of fun, a way of making life easier or more interesting, turns very dark once they’re grown up and exchange identities one more time.
The premise of this story is interesting and this could have been a fascinating book. Unfortunately it wasn’t.
This book irritated me on many levels. I didn’t like the way Kevin’s walks through Dublin are described almost street by street. And if that didn’t work for someone like me, who is somewhat familiar with those streets, I can’t help wondering what it must be like for someone who doesn’t know Dublin at all. Those descriptions almost made me wonder if maybe Jordan is hoping that someone, in the future, will start walking tours through Dublin based on this book like we have them for Joyce’s Ulysses.
If there is a deeper significance to the vampire part of the story-line it was lost on me and I don’t think the story would have lost anything if it had been left out.
The revelation later on in the book didn’t come as any sort of a surprise to me either.
Overall I was rather disappointed with this book that seemed to promise so much more than it delivered. It felt contrived and rather self-indulgent.
This was my first book by Jordan, and after this experience I rather doubt if I will try anything else by him anytime soon.
And before long he starts taking advantage of this resemblance especially when it comes to girls.
When Kevin and his double, Gerald Spain, meet up, the exchanging identities for various purposes is at first almost a game, something to make their lives easier, to achieve things they feel they can’t do as themselves.
But, what starts out as a bit of fun, a way of making life easier or more interesting, turns very dark once they’re grown up and exchange identities one more time.
The premise of this story is interesting and this could have been a fascinating book. Unfortunately it wasn’t.
This book irritated me on many levels. I didn’t like the way Kevin’s walks through Dublin are described almost street by street. And if that didn’t work for someone like me, who is somewhat familiar with those streets, I can’t help wondering what it must be like for someone who doesn’t know Dublin at all. Those descriptions almost made me wonder if maybe Jordan is hoping that someone, in the future, will start walking tours through Dublin based on this book like we have them for Joyce’s Ulysses.
If there is a deeper significance to the vampire part of the story-line it was lost on me and I don’t think the story would have lost anything if it had been left out.
The revelation later on in the book didn’t come as any sort of a surprise to me either.
Overall I was rather disappointed with this book that seemed to promise so much more than it delivered. It felt contrived and rather self-indulgent.
This was my first book by Jordan, and after this experience I rather doubt if I will try anything else by him anytime soon.
October 9, 2015
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.
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.
January 10, 2014
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.
Not an easy read, but the best things in life seldom are.
January 22, 2018
I have just read this for a second time and thought I had already written a review!
What can I say ... a slight disclaimer: Neil and I attended the same college in Dublin (1 year apart) and I have enjoyed his work in film and writing for a long time, so there is a built-in bias. Some may describe this as a "haunting" novel, for me it is much more than that. I see on almost every page familiar streets, landmarks, memories and possibly a shadow of myself reflected in some of the story-line, which is probably pure hubris on my behalf. For those who didn't grow up in the Dublin of 50s through 70s the North/South divide may be difficult to understand but Neil has captured it wonderfully, it was a very real presence. The divide may have lasted a lot longer than that as a friend told me when the Ireland rugby team played some games at Croke Park (2010?) while Lansdowne was under renovation the South side Rugby fans didn't know how to get to the stadium as it was on the North side of the city!! What I am trying to say is that the situation, influences and upbringings of the two protagonists is starkly in contrast and not only were they separated as very young children but the city divide emphasised and solidified their differences. Anyway a great read, I loved visiting North Wall, Marino, Bull Wall, Howth etc etc again albeit 7,000 kms and 50 years removed. A vital back-drop of the story that cant be emphasised enough is the "village" like aspect of the city in those days where bumping into the same people was a regular occurrence, which must be accepted if one is to truly understand the constant encounters and re-encounters depicted in the novel.
What can I say ... a slight disclaimer: Neil and I attended the same college in Dublin (1 year apart) and I have enjoyed his work in film and writing for a long time, so there is a built-in bias. Some may describe this as a "haunting" novel, for me it is much more than that. I see on almost every page familiar streets, landmarks, memories and possibly a shadow of myself reflected in some of the story-line, which is probably pure hubris on my behalf. For those who didn't grow up in the Dublin of 50s through 70s the North/South divide may be difficult to understand but Neil has captured it wonderfully, it was a very real presence. The divide may have lasted a lot longer than that as a friend told me when the Ireland rugby team played some games at Croke Park (2010?) while Lansdowne was under renovation the South side Rugby fans didn't know how to get to the stadium as it was on the North side of the city!! What I am trying to say is that the situation, influences and upbringings of the two protagonists is starkly in contrast and not only were they separated as very young children but the city divide emphasised and solidified their differences. Anyway a great read, I loved visiting North Wall, Marino, Bull Wall, Howth etc etc again albeit 7,000 kms and 50 years removed. A vital back-drop of the story that cant be emphasised enough is the "village" like aspect of the city in those days where bumping into the same people was a regular occurrence, which must be accepted if one is to truly understand the constant encounters and re-encounters depicted in the novel.
June 3, 2018
I liked it. I don’t think it needed to be as long of a story as it was - some parts seemed to take away from the overall story. But it was an interesting read. Thought provoking, makes you wonder where life might have led if you’d grown up a different way, in a different place, with different people. I enjoyed the story but it did seem too long in some places.
April 12, 2012
A devastating meditation on identity, the soul of modern Ireland, and the price we pay for dreams. Jordan fires on all cylinders; prose, narrative, and memorable characters all propel this novel to its conclusion with melancholic precision.
If I could write this well, I could sleep at night.
If I could write this well, I could sleep at night.
January 25, 2013
Meh. Felt like it spent 120 pages building in infinitesimal increments, then 50 pages idling, then the remainder of the book dribbling out like sands from a broken hour glass.
Predictably, I might add. And I so hate 2nd person POV (just read 2 in a row with this peculiar perspective) and I will definitely ensure that I never read another book told in that way again.
Predictably, I might add. And I so hate 2nd person POV (just read 2 in a row with this peculiar perspective) and I will definitely ensure that I never read another book told in that way again.
March 14, 2017
This is more of a four and a half star rating. This is the second of Jordan's books I've read (the Drowned Detective being the first) and he is rapidly becoming my favourite writer. His writing is beautiful. For me, he is able to bring literary quality writing to really interesting plots. I can hardly wait to read the next one.
January 8, 2019
My second read for 2019 and my second Irish author. Really loved this. It travelled with me to and work like a good friend. Good sense of place. Intriguing, sometimes uncomfortable story. Blurb was a bit offputting as it referred to Bram Stoker, so I was expecting something a bit more horror related. But actually a great read, with insights into two different lives with a twist at the end.
September 9, 2011
A very enjoyable read. And interesting, having just read Her Fearful Symmetry, another book that deals with a case of mistaken identity.
June 30, 2013
Very sad, very dark
Quite Neil Jordan
The Bram stoker element really didn't add much to the story for me / maybe it might pull in a few readers who wouldn't otherwise pick it up?
Quite Neil Jordan
The Bram stoker element really didn't add much to the story for me / maybe it might pull in a few readers who wouldn't otherwise pick it up?
August 25, 2024
I am not going to recap the story of Kevin Thunder and Gerald Spain, that is what the synopsis on Goodreads, Amazon, etc. are for, what I will try and do is explain what brilliant, beautifully moving novel this is, pretty close to a masterpiece.
Aside from the tale of Kevin and Gerry this is a wonderful, evocative love letter to Dublin, North and South (and more of that later and how it has, and hasn't changed. I will admit to a bias here, Jordan and I are not exact contemporaries, he is eight years older than I am, the Dublin he knew in the 1960s was barely different to the one I knew the 1970s. Although everyone talks of Joyce and his evocation of Dublin on June 16, 1904 for Irish of my and Jordan's generation Bloomsday and Joyce's Dublin is a thing of tourism. Jordan resurrects a Dublin, now equally vanished, where O'Connell street was lined with tatty arcade games, large parts of central Dublin was run down and decayed (just like London and New York at that time) and running into people you knew was not simply likely, but inevitable. It was small place Dublin and the river Liffey divided it in ways now impossible to imagine. That so much of the novel takes place on the North side in areas I knew like Clontarf, Marino and Fairview makes the novel impossible Proustian with even a Dublin version of the madelain in the Mary cakes from Bewley's cafes.
But this is not a laboured exercise in mnemonic aiding nostalgia reconstruction this novel is the evocation of time which can still resonate for those who don't know it the way Balzac, Hugo and Zola describe Paris, Bely St. Petersburg, Saba Trieste, Pasolini Friuli or, of course, Joyce Dublin.
It is also a story rich in meanings and readings, identity, family, fathers and their children, children and their parents-fathers in particular. But there is also love and loss and more than anything an attempt to understand and find a place in the world which in the end is mostly the tale of trying to connect and failing. I can't say that these are themes in all Jordan's work but it is there in his first collection stories 'A Night in Tunisia' and his 2022 novel The Ballad of Lord Edward and Citizen Small.
A truly great novel which should not be missed because Jordan is a writer of utter honesty and truth.
Aside from the tale of Kevin and Gerry this is a wonderful, evocative love letter to Dublin, North and South (and more of that later and how it has, and hasn't changed. I will admit to a bias here, Jordan and I are not exact contemporaries, he is eight years older than I am, the Dublin he knew in the 1960s was barely different to the one I knew the 1970s. Although everyone talks of Joyce and his evocation of Dublin on June 16, 1904 for Irish of my and Jordan's generation Bloomsday and Joyce's Dublin is a thing of tourism. Jordan resurrects a Dublin, now equally vanished, where O'Connell street was lined with tatty arcade games, large parts of central Dublin was run down and decayed (just like London and New York at that time) and running into people you knew was not simply likely, but inevitable. It was small place Dublin and the river Liffey divided it in ways now impossible to imagine. That so much of the novel takes place on the North side in areas I knew like Clontarf, Marino and Fairview makes the novel impossible Proustian with even a Dublin version of the madelain in the Mary cakes from Bewley's cafes.
But this is not a laboured exercise in mnemonic aiding nostalgia reconstruction this novel is the evocation of time which can still resonate for those who don't know it the way Balzac, Hugo and Zola describe Paris, Bely St. Petersburg, Saba Trieste, Pasolini Friuli or, of course, Joyce Dublin.
It is also a story rich in meanings and readings, identity, family, fathers and their children, children and their parents-fathers in particular. But there is also love and loss and more than anything an attempt to understand and find a place in the world which in the end is mostly the tale of trying to connect and failing. I can't say that these are themes in all Jordan's work but it is there in his first collection stories 'A Night in Tunisia' and his 2022 novel The Ballad of Lord Edward and Citizen Small.
A truly great novel which should not be missed because Jordan is a writer of utter honesty and truth.
April 21, 2018
So it turns out I somehow managed to read two Irish books about doppelgängers and crime, both with the same weird melancholy. I preferred Tana French's The Likeness, but on the whole, quite liked this book. It's certainly evocative, that's for sure.
Also I've read two Neil Jordan books and tried to read a third but for some reason, the third, The Drowned Detective, has this really terrible style that just doesn't work, and it's awful? I had to stop it after a couple of chapters. The hell, Neil.
Also I've read two Neil Jordan books and tried to read a third but for some reason, the third, The Drowned Detective, has this really terrible style that just doesn't work, and it's awful? I had to stop it after a couple of chapters. The hell, Neil.
Read
September 29, 2024DNF because lost it at the airport. I got about 50 pages in and I’m not too upset about not finishing. It is an interesting plot but the author had one of those rambling styles that seems to take forever to make a point. It gave the feeling of reading one big run on sentence. I did however pick up on a cool theme of sounds and the memories they create which would have been fun to explore throughout the book.
January 10, 2025
Probably more of a solid 2.5 stars tbh.
I found parts of it quite confusing with too much description of the area etc but the ending made up for it.
I found it hard to keep up with characters and who is who between the two lads but maybe that was the point?
I found parts of it quite confusing with too much description of the area etc but the ending made up for it.
I found it hard to keep up with characters and who is who between the two lads but maybe that was the point?
March 13, 2018
Interesting idea, but the entire novel is written in the second person. Ultimately I couldn't handle it.
November 30, 2019
meh - neither compelling nor "powerful". The dialogue just plods on.
February 11, 2020
Twins separated at birth finally come together.
April 10, 2020
Interesting concept, but overall melancholy and meh.
August 7, 2020
3.5
• kitap okuyormuş gibi değil ama film izliyormuş gibi
• tahmin edilebilir bir ilerleyişi vardı? ama genel olarak double teması güzeldi
• kitap okuyormuş gibi değil ama film izliyormuş gibi
• tahmin edilebilir bir ilerleyişi vardı? ama genel olarak double teması güzeldi
September 21, 2025
The Prestige was always my favourite Christopher Nolan movie
December 19, 2012
They say everyone has a double in the world. Even if it’s from behind, we’ve often heard stories of people running up to total strangers, tapping them on the shoulder and greeting them like long lost friends. Only for the stranger to turn around and leave the greeter stumped and embarrassed when they realise they’re facing a total stranger. I’ve done it myself, with some very embarrassing consequences. This is the premise for Irish Film director Neil Jordan’s fifth book “Mistaken”.
Kevin Thunder has a look-a-like, Gerald Spain; they live on different sides of Dublin city. Kevin lives on the Northside and Gerald on the Southside. But Kevin is forever being mistaken for Gerald, he’s thrown out of amusement arcades, accused of shoplifting and meets girls Gerald has dated and who mistake him for the Southside charmer, eventually he deliberately starts interloping into Gerald’s life. Kevin’s life is that of an only child to a near permanently absent bookmaker father and a loving mother who goes swimming daily and takes in lodgers in a house next door to where Bram Stoker lived.
Gerald grows up in an affluent family on the Southside where he goes to one of the best schools in Ireland and goes on to be a famous writer. We then through the eyes of Kevin and his recanting to Emily, Gerald’s daughter retrace their strange lives and how their paths criss-crossed over the years for good and bad.
The book was recently presented to my local book group and it is a great read, this being echoed by the majority of the group. I found it a nice easy read with a great tour round almost every part of Dublin and a few foreign places. As you would expect from an accomplished film director and scriptwriter it is well written. I found it strangely erotic in his descriptions of the central characters shared romantic involvement, more so then Fifty Shades. Also it’s a very exciting concept, innocently walking into someone else life pretending to be them and successfully carrying it off without even trying, it’s like a voyeurs wet dream.
Of the two main characters, Gerald is rather washed over, and so are his family, but there is a good explanation for this. The story jumps back and forth through time and geographically when told through one main character, if we’d had it told through both characters the reader would have probably got confused very quickly and given up on the book, this is something Jordan has learned from his film work and from the basic premise of all story telling, “KISS” – keep it simple stupid.
You do start to wonder how these two can look so a like and there were thoughts of something a kin to the "Time Travellers wife" by Audrey Niffenegger or the result of weird medical experiments, when all in all it’s actually a rather mundane reason for their shared resemblances. The minor downsides to this book are some very woefully editing, which was picked by other members of the book group, including the misspelling of the name of a very well known Italian restaurant in Dublin and the re-routing of a certain bus route in south Dublin.
There are a couple of characters who should maybe have been cut from the story in the drafting process, namely Daragh a friend of Kevin’s who suffers a breakdown after getting caught up in their sordid double life and the recurring ghost of Bram Stoker which does nothing drive story on.
Overall this is a great read from a master story-teller of the celluloid and print genres, so open this book and let your voyeuristic side out and lose yourself in the back waters and thoroughfares of Dublin's fair city.
December 16, 2015
Neil Jordan is probably best known for his films but I prefer his work as a novelist. His writing is not to everyone’s taste, some would say that his interweaved plot lines and symbology are contrivances but I really like them; real life is generally quite amorphous and not particularly interesting, when I read a novel I want structure and I want drama. It could be likened to the painting of the pre-Raphaelites, vivid colours, plenty of contrast and considerable detail, often with naturalistic and seasonal embellishments that give the work a sense of time. That said he avoids trite and lazy second-hand symbology that has more place in visual art and focuses on the details that the narrating character notice as significant from their own experiences and expertise.
To date I have read Tunisian Nights, Dream of a Beast, Shade and, most recently, Mistaken and each has been a pleasure to read. I would particularly recommend Mistaken and (even more) Shade. They are both epics of character development with time threads that shift seamlessly to weave together story lines so as to evoke parallels between different events such that the whole structure reflects the components which hold elements of the entirety in microcosm. Jordan’s ability to devise plots and build towards a final denouement through revelation is one of his great talents. Whilst not everyone will agree with me I think that both of these works are like an embodiment of a manifesto of how to write a good novel.
Jordan’s use of the English (Irish!) language is lyrical but unpretentious, his observations are sharp and varied and he has a superbly sensual and evocative way of writing. His characters are believable but complex mixtures of good and bad in the manner of a modern day Dostoyevsky.
For me a great novel is one that leaves me with a pang of regret when I have to surrogate intrigue and artful melancholia of the imagined world with the mundanity of everyday life. Mistaken and Shade especially have these qualities and I can only hope that he attains the audience he deserves as a novelist so that they may also enjoy the man’s genius. I cannot recommend his work highly enough.
To date I have read Tunisian Nights, Dream of a Beast, Shade and, most recently, Mistaken and each has been a pleasure to read. I would particularly recommend Mistaken and (even more) Shade. They are both epics of character development with time threads that shift seamlessly to weave together story lines so as to evoke parallels between different events such that the whole structure reflects the components which hold elements of the entirety in microcosm. Jordan’s ability to devise plots and build towards a final denouement through revelation is one of his great talents. Whilst not everyone will agree with me I think that both of these works are like an embodiment of a manifesto of how to write a good novel.
Jordan’s use of the English (Irish!) language is lyrical but unpretentious, his observations are sharp and varied and he has a superbly sensual and evocative way of writing. His characters are believable but complex mixtures of good and bad in the manner of a modern day Dostoyevsky.
For me a great novel is one that leaves me with a pang of regret when I have to surrogate intrigue and artful melancholia of the imagined world with the mundanity of everyday life. Mistaken and Shade especially have these qualities and I can only hope that he attains the audience he deserves as a novelist so that they may also enjoy the man’s genius. I cannot recommend his work highly enough.
October 16, 2015
A story about two very different teenage boys, Kevin Thunder and Gerald Spain, who live in Dublin and look alike.
Kevin is our narrator, he has been born on the 'Northside' of the river Liffey and following a series of events where bus conductors, girls and other various people accuse him of wrongdoings, he realises he has a double and eventually spots him.
Kevin's parents lead a modest life while Gerald has had a more prosperous upbringing enjoying the privilege of private Jesuit education in Belvedere College on the Northside of the Liffey. Error of school chosen because in reality, he would have attended private education in Gonzaga College, the Jesuit school on the southside which is quite literally a stone's throw from his home in Palmerstown Park.
The boys paths cross several times over the years and they become friends of sorts.
I gave the book two stars, I found it tedious to read. It had the potential to be interesting but it was gloomy, dreary, almost depressing. It was dead boring in many places and the frequent descriptions of sexual encounters on grassy banks, sandy sea shores, Stephen's Green and even elevators was descriptively nauseating.
People drowned in oceans and in alcohol, a bit of drug dependence thrown in for good measure with lots of unplanned pregnancies and all that was missing was the stereotypical Parish Priest.
I believe Neil Jordan had an intriguing idea for a story which could have been really enjoyable (and even humorous in places) but it wasn't.
The plot dragged for the first 200 pages and only improved around page 218. In fact, the whole rhythm of the book changed here but it took such a long time to reach that this is not a book I'd recommend to anyone.
Kevin is our narrator, he has been born on the 'Northside' of the river Liffey and following a series of events where bus conductors, girls and other various people accuse him of wrongdoings, he realises he has a double and eventually spots him.
Kevin's parents lead a modest life while Gerald has had a more prosperous upbringing enjoying the privilege of private Jesuit education in Belvedere College on the Northside of the Liffey. Error of school chosen because in reality, he would have attended private education in Gonzaga College, the Jesuit school on the southside which is quite literally a stone's throw from his home in Palmerstown Park.
The boys paths cross several times over the years and they become friends of sorts.
I gave the book two stars, I found it tedious to read. It had the potential to be interesting but it was gloomy, dreary, almost depressing. It was dead boring in many places and the frequent descriptions of sexual encounters on grassy banks, sandy sea shores, Stephen's Green and even elevators was descriptively nauseating.
People drowned in oceans and in alcohol, a bit of drug dependence thrown in for good measure with lots of unplanned pregnancies and all that was missing was the stereotypical Parish Priest.
I believe Neil Jordan had an intriguing idea for a story which could have been really enjoyable (and even humorous in places) but it wasn't.
The plot dragged for the first 200 pages and only improved around page 218. In fact, the whole rhythm of the book changed here but it took such a long time to reach that this is not a book I'd recommend to anyone.
January 14, 2013
I found the first half of this book a real struggle and only persevered after reading some reviews which said that after the first hundred pages it gets easier and it does. I had to keep reminding myself that it is set in the second half of the 20th century as it has a distinct gothic feel to it, partly due to the style of the writing and also to the continual references to Dracula and the fact that the main character grew up in the house next to Bram Stokers childhood home. It is an insight into the divide which everyone talks about in relation to Dublin, whether you are from the north or south side of the river and how we all feel that someone else seems to have a better life than we do and how that is not always the case. It is an interesting story of how these two boys and men who look so alike grow up in a capital city which is at its essence a large village where their paths cross in small and immense ways and has such an impact on their lives. I enjoyed the journey round Dublin with them and it brought back memories for me (I remembered visiting a college friend who worked with the patients in Portrane Physciatric hospital, they helped her look after the grounds and worked in the greenhouses). All in all it was an unusual book and when I got to the end I was relieved as I thought it was going to be one of those books that leaves you looking for the missing pages and that can be very annoying and frustrating but instead I was left with the feeling that he had told his story to the best of his ability and you could enjoy it or not.
March 15, 2016
Ulysses meets The Double meets Strangers on a Train. Neil Jordan should not be surprised at that glib intro since the movie director has probably heard so many of these "meets" that his writer's sensibility has a very tough hide by now. But even cliches have an element of truth. "Mistaken" revels in Dublin like Ulysses as it follows the character through all the societal and physical levels of the fair city. "Mistaken" is a doubles novel at its very core. Finally, there is a very creepy Patricia Highsmith vibe underlying all of the narration. But somehow Jordan has the chops to keep it all going - I was not expecting such talent from somebody who I thought of primarily as a film-maker!
January 31, 2016
Mistaken is 300-page letter to Emily, the daughter of a friend. Kevin Thunder begins his letter after meeting Emily at her father’s funeral and he proceeds to write the story he is unable to tell her in words. Kevin met Emily’s father, Gerald Spain, by reputation long before they met in person. For Gerald was his doppelganger in the small city of Dublin. A range of cases of mistaken identity lead Kevin to realise that there is another young Dubliner leading his life, with an edge. Growing up in Marino, Kevin lives a secure, if spare, life with his doting mother and often-absent father. However, his life gradually intertwines with this unseen other. When they finally meet Kevin and Gerald share vital moments but little time. Their lives are ultimately separate but punctuated by intense unity. Mistaken is fiercely atmospheric book; Jordan is essentially a poet writing prose.
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