Elizabeth Taylor is a surgeon at a city hospital, a gifted, driven and rare woman excelling in a male-dominated culture. One day, while operating on a young woman in a critical condition, something goes gravely wrong. A Mistake is a compelling story of human fallibility, and the dangerous hunger for black and white answers in a world of exponential complication and nuance. ' You' d think Carl Shuker couldn' t get any better, but A Mistake is the novel at its visceral and emotional best. This is the most compelling book I' ve read in years. It pulls you along at breakneck speed through questions of failure, exposure and manners. Shuker reinvents the form with every novel and A Mistake is a masterpiece which feels more like a body than a book – the life pumps and glugs and flexes inside its pages.' - Pip Adam 'A Mistake is a razor sharp and compelling novel from a singular, sophisticated literary voice in contemporary New Zealand fiction.' - Kiran Dass, Time Out 'In Carl Shuker's novel, an operation in a Wellington hospital goes horribly wrong under the supervision of Elizabeth Taylor, a capable, ambitious female surgeon. A Mistake is a masterful dissection of truth and fallibility,
