Neil Jordan's recent novel Mistaken is the writer and film maker's first work of fiction in seven years. Set in 1960s Dublin, the protagonist Kevin Thunder has a double, who he is constantly mistaken for. Growing up living next door to a house which Bram Stoker, the creator of Dracula, used to inhabit, he is also haunted by a vampire.
Jordan is no stranger to vampires. The filmmaker’s upcoming feature Byzantium will mark his second foray into the world of the undead. His adaptation of Anne Rice’s cult novel Interview with the Vampire in 1994 predates the current vampire trend; in fact, it started one of its own back in the pre-Twilight mid-nineties, sending Anne Rice’s novel back into the bestseller lists.
Jordan has a distinguished literary career. His first collection of short stories, A Night in Tunisia (1976), was awarded the Guardian fiction prize. His first novel, The Past (1980), was followed by three others -- The Dream of a Beast (1983), Sunrise with Seamonster (1994) and Shade (2004). Neil Jordan’s recent novel is not about vampires, despite the fact that the protagonist is shadowed by one.
Dublin doppelgangers
While a vampire loiters in the shadows throughout this novel, the plot revolves around the trope of the doppelganger. Kevin Thunder and Gerry Spain each grew up in the Dublin of the 1960s and they both share a remarkable resemblance to one another.
Kevin, the protagonist is the only son in a northside working-class family. He is frequently mistaken for Gerry from south Dublin, a lawyer’s son attending school at the exclusive Belvedere College. Kevin is accused, in Gerry’s place, of shoplifting from Woolworths and he is berated for skipping out on bus fares.
From an early stage, the young Kevin accepts these incidents passively, almost numbly, including the girlfriends he acquires as he's mistaken for Gerry. Kevin and Gerry meet periodically throughout their teenage years, but these instances are fleeting. Later, the fledging writer Gerry publishes a poem under his double’s name, much to Kevin’s unease.
The characters lives develop along lines pre-inscribed by social class and family background. Gerry trains for a career in law which he abandons, becoming a successful writer, husband and father. Kevin watches his double’s career progress noting disappointment both with the “increasingly conservative turn” Gerry’s work took and with the Irish literary scene in general. Kevin himself takes up architectural drawing, having attended regional college, and after the death of his mother shares the house with his father who, having earlier abandoned the family, makes a belated return.
Nuances of social class and the differences between everyday lives are handled deftly, and the writing is always perfectly pitched. During one of their rare meetings, Gerry explains to Kevin that he can share a short story he has written with his parents as, “It belongs to the realm of things you can talk about at dinner.” Kevin instinctively recoils, “Dinner. I didn’t understand the concept. What we had in the Crescent we called tea.”
Traversing Dublin
Many of the chapters are named after the geography and landmarks of Dublin. It opens with ‘Deansgrange’, moves on to ‘Marino’ and only the final section is titled ‘Nowhere’. One of the pleasures of this novel is how it situates itself solidly and unselfconsciously in the actual city of Dublin. It is a Dublin that, for all the story’s gothic flourishes, always rings true.
From local details, like a lodging house in Marino with the “cries of children from Fairview Park” and “the number 30 bus grinding towards the city centre”, to the panoramas, “the opulence of the city was moving southwards, towards the foothills of the Dublin mountains,” Jordan’s Mistaken never puts a foot wrong as it traverses the city.
Other Lives
At one point Gerry enlists Kevin to help him remove himself from an affair in America, he persuades Gerry to take his place and visit the woman in Manhattan. While the scene that develops is clearly intended as pivotal, it provides the only instance of clumsy writing in the entire novel. For a central scene, it is also surprisingly unnecessary.
The sense of guilt and paralysis, partially engendered for Kevin by being confronted by the other life he could have lived, has already been more than adequately developed throughout the course of the novel. The novel is ultimately about these possibilities of otherness and how they can be limited by social class. For Kevin, being faced with the embodiment of an alternative life leaves him feeling a bystander as his own life develops. Which is where the vampire, haunting, half-alive, and always keeping pace, comes in.
Sources
- Jordan, Neil. A Night in Tunisia. Dublin: The Irish Writers' Co-operative, 1976.
- The Past. London: Jonathan Cape, 1980.
- The Dream of a Beast. London: Chatto & Windus, 1983.
- Sunrise with Seamonster. London: Chatto & Windus, 1994.
- Shade. London: John Murray, 2004.
- Mistaken. London: John Murray, 2011.
- Rice, Anne. Interview with the Vampire. London: Sphere, 2010.
Ross Moore - Ross Moore reviews fiction and poetry. He lives in Belfast, N. Ireland. You can see examples of his work ...
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