From a Park Bench, a Great American Novel

In 2012, the British novelist Jonathan Lee felt a bit down and out, like he hit “the low ebb” of his career, as he once said. Newly arrived to New York from London, perhaps to try to de-stress, the then thirty-one-year-old writer took a walk through Central Park. What he found there, a bench commemorating the murdered civic leader Andrew Haswell Green, became the source for one of the finest New York —and American — novels of the year: “The Great Mistake” (Knopf, 2021).

A fictionalized portrait of Green, a Massachusetts-born man who rose from near poverty to help create such New York icons as Central Park and the New York Public Library, only to be fatally shot on a brisk November morning in 1903, “The Great Mistake” is a masterful work of searing poignancy.

Alternating between Green’s public and private lives, contrasting scenes of his lonesome boyhood with those of his peopled adulthood in 19th century New York, the book becomes the story of a man whose social life obscured his internal struggle. It’s the story of a man who’s alone even in a crowd, who endures a solitary pain.

While “The Great Mistake” is a work of historical fiction, including such compelling characters as a dauntless brothel owner and a troubled inspector, it feels contemporary and reads like the story of any lovelorn individual walking today’s avenues.

“Led By Curiosity”

Lee is a deeply compassionate novelist. A Surrey native who found companionship in the many books he read in his youth, he has also become one of today’s most daring fiction writers.

His previous novel, “High Dive” (2016), for instance, boldly reimagined a 1984 attempt to assassinate former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. Years before, when he was only sixteen, he sent a manuscript to the publisher who rejected it but published his debut novel, “Who is Mr Satoshi?” (2010), years later.

“I like to be just led by curiosity,” he says of his goal as a novelist. “I tend to ignore that advice of, ‘Write what you know’ and I prefer to write about what I want to know about. Coming across Andrew Haswell Green’s story, encountering by chance a park bench with his name on it in Central Park, is probably an example of that.”

The 41-year-old novelist, who has published four novels so far, continues that, “I start a lot of novels that I don’t finish but, if I’m intrigued enough, then the intrigue kind of powers me through the end of the process ... Underestimating the importance of just being intrigued by the subject you’re writing about, whether that’s some aspect of yourself, some aspect of history, or of your surroundings- that’s an important factor. You need something that’s going to keep you interested for years at a time.”

When Lee came across the bench bearing Green’s name a decade ago, with its inscription mentioning that the man was the “Father of Greater New York,” he became especially curious.

“I don’t think I really knew much about 19th century New York,” he says, “And actually when I first came across that stone bench in Central Park that was dedicated to Andrew Haswell Green ... I think I felt a little sense of shame that I didn’t know who he was.”

Case of Mistaken Identity

After encountering the bench, however, as he scoured the New York Historical Society archives and mentioned Green to people, he discovered that not many knew who he was. “And on book tours for this book, I probably only met a few people who knew who was beforehand,” he says.

Of that initial encounter with the commemorative bench, Lee says, “I think the inscription ... referred to him as the Directing Genius of Central Park ... I thought to myself, ‘Well, who is this person who created Central Park? Why haven’t I heard of him? What does Father of Greater New York mean?’

“I think I probably took out my phone there and then, looked him up and was probably more intrigued by the fact that not many search results popped up. But one thing that did pop up mentioned that he’d been murdered in a case of mistaken identity in 1903.”

The opening line of “The Great Mistake” starts with that fatal error: “The last attempt on the life of Andrew Haswell Green took place on Park Avenue in 1903.” From there, Lee explores not only Green’s murder which, in real life, was committed by a spurned lover named Cornelius Williams, but his life, too.

As Lee portrays it, taking inspiration from Green’s diaries and letters, it was a largely solitary life, replete with a harsh father, forbidden romance and many nights of solitude.

Throughout the novel, however, Lee shows that Green was also a very public individual who lived, and perhaps died, for New York.

With “The Great Mistake,” Lee honors the man and has written an enduring novel.