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A review by thisotherbookaccount
The Great Mistake by Jonathan Lee
3.0
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2.5 stars, rounded up.
Andrew Haswell Green is known as the Father of Greater New York because he’s responsible for everything from Central Park and the New York Public Library to the Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. However, not much is known about him because he was an intensely private person. In 1903, he was shot dead in front of his apartment along Park Avenue, sparking off an investigation into the perpetrator’s motive. Green’s enigmatic life is also fertile grounds for author Jonathan Lee to explore, including a potential same-sex relationship with Samuel Tilden, a Governor of New York and a Presidential Candidate at one point.
I had high hopes for The Great Mistake since I heard about it late last year. Unfortunately, the book falls short on too many fronts for my liking.
Lee’s authorial voice is as intrusive as it is disruptive. Instead of allowing the characters to tell the story, Lee’s ‘voice’ constantly butts its way into the narrative. It’s hard to describe, but imagine yourself at a dinner table with a talkative aunt. The aunt says that Cousin Sam has an interesting story about what happened last weekend but, instead of letting Cousin Sam do the talking, your aunt takes over the conversation — it’s like that. It doesn’t help that your aunt goes off on big tangents and doesn’t speak with quotation marks (the horrors).
By pure coincidence, this wasn’t the first book I read this year about a man trying to hide his attraction for another. Unlike James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, the treatment of Green’s secret relationship with Tilden feels forced and clumsy, almost like a bad facsimile of the real thing.
All of this is stretched over a threadbare plot, with a murder mystery that’s all too easily solved.
Was it a great mistake to read The Great Mistake? No, but it’s not a mistake it will likely learn a lesson from in a week or two.
2.5 stars, rounded up.
Andrew Haswell Green is known as the Father of Greater New York because he’s responsible for everything from Central Park and the New York Public Library to the Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. However, not much is known about him because he was an intensely private person. In 1903, he was shot dead in front of his apartment along Park Avenue, sparking off an investigation into the perpetrator’s motive. Green’s enigmatic life is also fertile grounds for author Jonathan Lee to explore, including a potential same-sex relationship with Samuel Tilden, a Governor of New York and a Presidential Candidate at one point.
I had high hopes for The Great Mistake since I heard about it late last year. Unfortunately, the book falls short on too many fronts for my liking.
Lee’s authorial voice is as intrusive as it is disruptive. Instead of allowing the characters to tell the story, Lee’s ‘voice’ constantly butts its way into the narrative. It’s hard to describe, but imagine yourself at a dinner table with a talkative aunt. The aunt says that Cousin Sam has an interesting story about what happened last weekend but, instead of letting Cousin Sam do the talking, your aunt takes over the conversation — it’s like that. It doesn’t help that your aunt goes off on big tangents and doesn’t speak with quotation marks (the horrors).
By pure coincidence, this wasn’t the first book I read this year about a man trying to hide his attraction for another. Unlike James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, the treatment of Green’s secret relationship with Tilden feels forced and clumsy, almost like a bad facsimile of the real thing.
All of this is stretched over a threadbare plot, with a murder mystery that’s all too easily solved.
Was it a great mistake to read The Great Mistake? No, but it’s not a mistake it will likely learn a lesson from in a week or two.