RaveThe Big Issue (UK)Writing a historical novel about a forgotten city planner in the hope of creating a moving tale of loss, hope, and accidental murder would be a prospect to scare most novelists before they got to the plot. But Jonathan Lee is not a scared novelist, and he is certainly not a scared writer. His new work The Great Mistake manages to weave all of these qualities into its dense narrative, resembling both a fully formed biopic and a deeply personal account at the same time ... Lee’s depiction of this supposedly grand but increasingly tragic character of Andrew Green drives this novel beyond the usual strictures of biographical mores; that it is written in the simultaneously unassuming but rich style Lee possesses only increases this ... The luckless, deranged nature of his death shadows over the whole story, acting as a backdrop against the guilts, doubts and also uncomfortable certainties of Green’s life, cut short in so many ways. We have only the lush writing of Jonathan Lee to make it so memorable.
