Jonathan Lee’s The Great Mistake is a novel so comprehensively steeped in American literary history that it comes as something of a surprise to find that its author is a fortysomething from Surrey. There’s Fitzgerald, of course – The Great Gatsby is echoed in more than just the novel’s title. The Great Mistake examines the life of a great American, Andrew Haswell Green, through the lens of his death. It’s perhaps fitting that at a time when the Great American Novel is at a low ebb – reeking too much of the gentleman’s club for our enlightened age – a Brit should write what is likely to be the best American novel of the year. The Great Mistake is a book of extraordinary intelligence and style, written in language at once beautiful and playfully aphoristic.

Source: The Guardian May 30, 2021 09:56 UTC