There's a strange irony in how a man's influence can be felt everywhere in a city, but the man himself is mostly unknown. Andrew Haswell Green was considered “the Father of Greater New York”. He was a city planner responsible for some of the city's most notable landmarks and institutions including Central Park, the New York Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This businessman and lawyer created a tremendous legacy, but when he was 83 years old he became the victim of a strange murder case which occurred in 1903. The mystery surrounding the inner life of this figure is the subject of Jonathan Lee's new novel “The Great Mistake” and Green comes to feel like a chimera the author is chasing in order to understand him – even when Green seems not to know himself. The story is framed around the peculiar circumstances of his death and gradually we come to discover the motive behind it, but the real enigma is Green's inexpressible desire which accompanies him throughout his life and never finds fulfilment. In this way, Lee captures a tender sense of loneliness and these grand spaces for the public good which Green created are underlined by a solemn yearning for human connection.

Green comes from humble beginnings and we follow the story of his life as he works his way up in the world. But he comes to ruefully look back at the trajectory of his ascent when asked to recount it to people around him: “People liked all that Dickensian nonsense.” Though Dickens earnestly wanted his readers to pity his characters, Green repels such sentimental notions though we come to sympathize with how his father rejected him, the gruelling ordeal of his apprenticeship and the intimacy which always seemed to elude him. Whenever he becomes emotionally and physically close to other men in his life, the connection is severed with a warning. Wrapped in this is a desire which the narrative itself never names but is felt everywhere. Lee embeds in his prose a sensuality which is intense even if it isn't explicit: “Their shadows touched on the ground.” As such the author describes an intangible wanting which mirrors the state of Green's consciousness. His queerness is not labelled because Green wouldn't have described himself that way but it is coded in descriptions of his relationship with his mentor Samuel who is “his most beloved friend”.

What's interesting is that although being gay has come to be understood as a badge which should be defiantly worn to insist upon social acceptance, there are other dynamics which admit the nature of being a homosexual without naming it. I found it touching the way this novel portrays Green's relationship with his brother where a misunderstanding divides them but it shows how his brother accepts Green in a way he didn't expect. Though tacit forms of approval come with their own hazards, this shows how the real issue perhaps comes from Green's unwillingness to admit or accept his own desires and state of being. Trauma certainly leads to suppression, but Lee suggests early in the novel that Green is almost fated never to live the life he really desires: “At times what he felt, late at night, during these years, was a kind of helpless nostalgia, an emotion that he knew he had not yet earned. But it wasn't nostalgia for times he had already lived through. It was nostalgia for versions of himself he hadn't yet been.”

As a counterpoint to Green's character is the enigmatic figure of Bessie Davis who is haplessly linked to the murder case. She's a fascinating person who perhaps deserves a novel herself, but though her profession demands intimacy it comes with no affection. As such her fulfilment is not found with others: “She had never felt lonely when alone. It was simply not a sensation she had ever in her life experienced. But the loneliness she felt in the presence of other people? That indeed was a force.” In both these characters we get a sense of personalities who must uncomfortably navigate a society which doesn't accept them or allow them to succeed by being fully themselves. As such they must carve and build physical spaces which permit possibilities that they themselves can never entirely realise. There's a chilling moment towards the end of the novel when Green enters a subterranean space of the city and finds there a comfort which he never felt on the surface. I enjoyed how this poignant novel elegantly describes the tension between our inner and outer reality which can make us strangers even to ourselves.

You can read a preview of the novel here: https://www.jellybooks.com/cloud_reader/previews/the-great-mistake_9781783786244/L3Leb

Sometimes part of the pleasure of reading new fiction is coming to it with no preconceived notions or expectations. In the case of “High Dive” I hadn't even read a description of the plot despite it being published at the end of October. It was a book that was sent to me and I decided to plunge in without knowing anything about it. The novel begins with an incredibly chilling scene of a young man named Dan undergoing an initiation for joining the IRA in 1978. Then the story shifts to 1984 with a teenage girl named Freya and her father Philip or “Moose” who is the assistant general manager of The Grand Hotel in Brighton. I felt instantly gripped as I realized I had entered a story leading up to the infamous IRA bombing of the Conservative Party conference. I knew the incident came close to taking Margaret Thatcher's life, but beyond that I had little knowledge or understanding about the history of this attack other than it was a significant incident amidst The Troubles. Jonathan Lee fictionally creates characters surrounding the event including the perpetrator of the bombing who went under the alias Roy Walsh to sympathetically show both sides' stories and the emotional tension and political conflict leading to this horrendous bombing.

Since this is entirely a fictional story set within a historical event, even readers who are familiar with the people involved with the bombing in October 1984 won't know the fates of Lee's primary characters. There is a chilling atmosphere surrounding the otherwise normal and emotionally-engaging story of single father Philip, a one-time Olympic hopeful high diver, who plans to be promoted to full manager of the hotel and his daughter Freya who is struggling to realize who she is and what she wants in life. The father-daughter relationship is particularly poignant when Philip becomes ill and Freya finds herself getting annoyed by his illness. She is conscious that such a reaction is selfish, yet she can’t prevent herself from feeling it and acting out because of it.

On 12 October 1984, the IRA carried out the most audacious terrorist attack in its history. Programme about the Brighting bombing.

Alongside this, Lee writes with great empathy about Irish Dan whose father was killed in a skirmish with police when he was an adolescent and who wants to make a radical change to end British rule in Ireland. He hides his activities from his mother and this secret plays out unspoken between them in a dramatic way. His charismatic and terrifying mentor Dawson eloquently summarizes the power imbalance between the two nations and how they had locked horns in conflict: “History clears away the blood, records the results, but that doesn’t mean the blood wasn’t there. An Ireland occupied by the Brits will never be free. An Ireland unfree will never be at peace.” There is a strong sense that the rhetoric of the time and the history books since haven’t recorded the full extent of the damage and death caused by the English oppression. In vivid, emotional scenes you’re made to feel the anger and outrage of the Irish Republicans and their desperate need to strike back against Thatcher: “Thatcher might govern in her own tight circle but she’s no right to power here, none at all. She’s queen of nothing, and we’ll treat her with the same respect she’s granted us. Let her taste a little bit of equality.” Lee shows the way these boiling tensions might have led to such desperate acts, laying out the battling ideologies at play and how people can justify acts of terror to themselves in order to make a grander statement and force change.

Although rooted in history, this is a novel that speaks very much about familiar issues we deal with today. Deadly political divisions. Wars of terror. Innocent victims. “High Dive” is a heart-wrenching drama that cleverly shows how the intensely personal becomes political and the war to dominate the narrative of history.