Netherland

Written by Joseph O'Neill

Narrated by Jefferson Mays

In a New York City made phantasmagorical by the events of 9/11, Hans-a banker originally from the Netherlands-finds himself marooned among the strange occupants of the Chelsea Hotel after his English wife and son return to London. Alone and untethered, feeling lost in the country he had come to regard as home, Hans stumbles upon the vibrant New York subculture of cricket, where he revisits his lost childhood and, thanks to a friendship with a charismatic and charming Trinidadian named Chuck Ramkissoon, begins to reconnect with his life and his adopted country. Ramkissoon, a Gatsby-like figure who is part idealist and part operator, introduces Hans to an "other" New York populated by immigrants and strivers of every race and nationality. Hans is alternately seduced and instructed by Chuck's particular brand of naivetE and chutzpah-by his ability to a hold fast to a sense of American and human possibility in which Hans has come to lose faith. Netherland gives us both a flawlessly drawn picture of a little-known New York and a story of much larger, and brilliantly achieved ambition: the grand strangeness and fading promise of 21st century America from an outsider's vantage point, and the complicated relationship between the American dream and the particular dreamers. Most immediately, though, it is the story of one man-of a marriage foundering and recuperating in its mystery and ordinariness, of the shallows and depths of male friendship, of mourning and memory. Joseph O'Neill's prose, in its conscientiousness and beauty, involves us utterly in the struggle for meaning that governs any single life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 9, 2009
• ISBN: 9781436169585

Reviews for Netherland

[photonegative · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

This book, for me, was basically the reading equivalent of watching a cricket match. It might make sense to someone, but that someone is not me. If I wasn't reading this for book discussion, I definitely wouldn't have finished it.

[captainsunbeam · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Some truly beautiful language, but a boring plot.

[rocketjk · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Netherland is one of those delightful novels that sweeps you into its world on the force of the author's beautiful use of language and narrative insight. Hans van den Brock is an alien in many senses. He is Dutch and living alone in New York City in 2006, as his wife, thrown by 9/11 and its aftermath, has taken the couple's young son and gone back to England, where she is from. Hans' sporting passion is cricket, and he soon gets involved with what he discovers to be a vibrant cricket scene in New York, playing as one of the only white men among a community of cricketers from the West Indies and South Asia. He soon makes the acquaintance of a forceful yet shadowing fellow, one Chuck Ramissoon, who is a-swirl with schemes and dreams and leaking knowledge on all sorts of subjects. The main theme, as I have noted, is alienation, but also perseverance in the face of sadness and loss. There are some passages that struck me so effectively that I went back and read them several times, and the plot moves along nicely, with swooping digressions and flashbacks that are seamless.The book is not perfect, certainly. Hans is a bit too much of that common fictional character, the emotionally passive person to whom life just sort of happens without his willing it. He is perceptive, so he can describe it well, but he's almost never in control. Also, the side theme of the cultural and national tapestry that is New York City seems a bit overdone to me. Just about every third world nationality is eventually mentioned, either on a cricket pitch or in a taxi cab, or in a restaurant or party. When Hans hails a ride from a Kyrgyz cabbie, I thought, "OK, I get it, already."But those are relatively minor quibbles. This book won the PEN/Faulkner Award and I can see why. It provides a very rewarding and enjoyable reading experience.

[snotbottom-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I've got mixed feelings on this one... Some moments of brilliance, but other times it was scattered and hard to follow. Not an easy read regardless. The story was also rather ordinary, don't expect an epic adventure here, but simply a story about a dutch/english immigrant who spends some time in NYC.

[pilgrimjess · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

“Perhaps the relevant truth is that we all find ourselves in temporal currents and that unless you're paying attention you'll discover, often too late, that an undertow of weeks or of years has pulled you deep into trouble.” Set in New York shortly after the 9/11 bombings this novel is in part immigrants chasing the American dream but also about re-building one's life after traumatic events. The narrator, Dutchman Hans van den Broek, finds himself marooned when his wife and young son leave to live in England as his marriages disintegrates. Hans has a high powered job which keeps him occupied on week days but at the weekend he is at a loss as to what to do with his life until he joins a local cricket club which rekindles memories of a happier childhood in Holland. Umpiring one of the games is Chuck Ramkissoon, a shady but charming Trinidadian businessman whose dream is to build a major international cricket stadium in Brooklyn. Under the cover of teaching him to drive Chuck allows Hans to chauffeur him around town as Chuck runs a numbers racket. The two form an unlikely friendship. Chuck’s innate optimism and force of purpose come to represent a lifeline to Hans if he is brave enough to grasp. However, it is not without possible cost as Chuck's driving ambition seems to mean that he is willing to do almost anything to make his dream come true. When Chuck's murdered body turns up in a New York river Hans is forced to re-evaluate their relationship.The plot of this novel thus runs on two tracks. In the first it is about a couple of blokes living in Manhattan and enjoying the game of cricket. However, as Hans marriage fails he is forced to re-evaluate his take on family, identity and self-worth. O’Neill’s prose is well thought out and written scattered with closely observed and powerful emotions which seem to be well in touch with the technical age we live in now as Hans goes “flying on Google’s satellite function,” searching for his son's bedroom window thousands of miles away. It is also full of cricketing terms but this shouldn't really deter non-fans of the sport. Overall an interesting read but in truth one that failed to grab me fully.

[janna_voss · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Cricket, followed by more cricket. Finally, a dash more of cricket.

[ronmartinez-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Much to be said for long, slow, contemplative exposition.

[paulagraph · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I don't understand all the fuss over this, in my opinion, not particularly interesting nor well-written novel. In fact, I've enjoyed reading reviews of the novel more than reading the novel itself. I at first thought that my lack of appreciation stemmed from ignorance of the game of cricket, which functions as an extended metaphor for the immigrant postcolonial experience (here,in post 9/11 NYC)and also as a model for a mulitethnic, 21st century, urban, getting-along-in-a -civil-and-productive-fashion life. But O'Neill pushes the cricket references to the point where they become a conceit and, to my mind, simply boring. The disrupted love story between Hans and his estranged-for-awhile wife Rachel is unconvincing. Rachel is a rather selfish know-it-all and I found myself disappointed (to the extent that I could work up any emotional involvement in this novel at all)that Hans reunites with her (granted, his relationship with his son Jake is at stake). The story of Chuck Ramkissoon, the autodidact Trinidadian savant and businessman cum gangster (or vice versa) who ends up murdered (we never find out by whom) and floating in the Gowanus Canal is somewhat more intriguing than the story of Hans and Rachel, but not enough to pull the novel as a whole out of its doldrums. Enough said.

[stillatim · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The word for this novel is congealed. I was really liking it, because I too am a cricketer living in the U.S. I enjoyed his snide attempts to explain cricket to an American audience, and his humorous observations on expatriate life, and his quite pleasant prose style. And then I noticed, thanks to a friend of mine, that it's all quite empty and ham-fisted. Fifty pages or so after I thought to myself, you know, he really is exoticizing Chuck in a most unpleasant manner, the wife tells him that he's exoticizing Chuck in a most unpleasant manner... and he says "No, Chuck is my friend," and that's the end of that. Similarly, just when I start to think, you know who must have killed Chuck? His front-man... the front man is on the phone denying that he killed Chuck, and a few pages later, the narrator has decided that he couldn't have killed Chuck. And suddenly I saw all the seams, and all the cricket and expat fellow feeling and lovely prose style couldn't hold it together. It sounds great when the NYT Book review says this is "the wittiest, angriest, most exacting, and most desolate work of fiction we've yet had about life in New York and London after the World Trade Center fell." Except it's not very witty, not angry, not particularly exacting, and certainly not desolate. And then you notice that the comparison being made here is to *other novels about life in New York and London since 2001.* That's not such a huge category.

[bluepigeon-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I heard O'Neill read at Power House fundraiser after Sandy. He read from Netherland, a part I now know to be one of the few that makes his main character remotely likable. I agree with some who have commented that it is OK if a writer creates an unlikable character, except you get the feeling that O'Neill has not created a character, it is just his annoying and self-absorbed and dull person speaking/thinking/writing through this empty vessel. Aren't all characters like that?, one might ask. Well, I am not lit critic, but somehow, no, there is a difference between the author successfully creating an unlikable character and the author failing at it; you're left with what we call at home "white male writing." Hard to explain what that is, and it is not literal (i.e. the author might not be white, but invariably a man). Basically, the voice of an innately privileged, arrogant, self-centered, annoyingly ignorant, pity-me-cuz-I-am-so-helpless-because-I-grew-up-entitled person.

O'Neill is not a bad writer. On the contrary, his language flows smooth and unforced, his similes are occasionally breathtaking. And he is capable of creating likable characters. In fact, the only reason I finished the book, and I imagine this must be the case for many others, is to see what happens to Chuck. Perhaps the dull Dutch person (I forgot his name already, is this possible?!? Oh, yes, Hans! Of course!) is meant to be balanced perfectly with this vibrant crook from Trinidad. Oh, look the all-American immigrant Chuck shows Hans, the privileged oil stock broker the joys of New York... I don't know, why does every character have to be so true to the stereotypes? Why is Hans so reserved and dull? Why is Chuck a cheating, lively islander full of joy and laughter and ridiculous ideas? Why is the immigrant Jew so unpleasant, and fat? Don't you dare think O'Neill is trying to say something by all this, because throughout the book he is trying real hard to convince us that he really really does not mean anything by all of it. It just is the way it is.

One main complaint I did have about O'Neill's writing was he endless street walking directions. Even if I knew exactly where he was talking about in Brooklyn, I don't see why a whole paragraph has to give turn by turn directions. I also don't see why a whole paragraph has to list EVERY possible and imaginable club name.

In the end, I finished the book, as I said, just to see how what happened to Chuck actually took place. I didn't care about Hans, or his annoying wife. The most memorable parts of the book are the stories told by Chuck, no matter how ridiculous they may be. Perhaps that's expected; after all, it is not that hard to believe that privileged Hans has always led a pretty, yet dull life, and Chuck a troubled, yet vibrant one.

So I guess the decision one has to make before reading this book is: Do you want to read about the pretty, dull life some rich broker lived for a few years in New York, and listen to him blab on about cricket, New York, London, Amsterdam, cricket, on and on? Personally, if I am going to read someone incessantly blab on, I prefer Rushdie, who despite it all, manages to keep it all very interesting.

[amelish · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Oh... yes. Above all, a sensitive book.

Joseph O'Neill was on Fresh Air yesterday. He's a charming man with a slightly awkward laugh.

[mykl8s · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

 -so much in one novel-made me regret that cricket is not our national sport

[sushitori · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The portrayal of the seedier side of NYC is fascinating, as is life in the Chelsea Hotel, with its many permanent, eccentric residents. But really??! Huge portions of the book are devoted to describing the game of cricket. The jacket cover should make that clear for those who are completely uninterested in learning about that sport!

[brendan.h · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Good, but I guess I was expecting better. I have to admit I'm a bit puzzled about how this book got a rep for being intimately linked with/part of the cultural moment that is/was the sept. 11 attacks. I guess I'm failing to see the deeper connection?

[lxydis-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

After all the hype, this was disappointing. Cricket scenes were the best, but otherwise it wasa unclear (and mostly uninteresting) where characters and story were going.

[erickibler · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Hans van den Broek is a top-earning financial guru who, untethered from life by the events of 9/11 and the defection of his wife (and son), finds his own guru in criminal/entrepreneur Chuck Ramkissoon. Hans is emotionally adrift in New York City, and finds his anchor in a cricket league, where he meets Chuck. Chuck imparts a joie de vivre, and a sense of history, of connectedness, using cricket as a metaphor, explaining to Hans that cricket was the original American sport of choice, before it was displaced by baseball. Hans is enlisted in Chuck's "Field of Dreams" project: to create a classic cricket field which, Chuck believes, will restore the proper place of cricket in the American soul. Hans learns that life must be responded to on the fly, just as a cricket batter must learn to respond to the unpredictable rolls and bounces of a cricket ball. The story isn't told in a linear fashion, but skips around in time. This is done for a reason, as some events take on their full meaning only in retrospect. I appreciate how O'Neill, like Hemingway, can often express things effectively by what is not said, rather than by what is said.

[jenneb_2 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I'm not mad at this book; it's just that I don't feel like it caused my brain to go in any new directions.
It felt like the author really liked this idea of West Indian and Asian immigrants who get together to play cricket in NYC, so he sort of wrote a novel around it.

I probably wouldn't have finished it if I hadn't been stuck in a doctor's office with nothing else to read except a two-year-old copy of Game Informer, but since I did, I don't think it was a complete waste of time. It was very well-written and if you like books about Dutch stock analysts whose marriages are in crisis, you might like this one.

[aliceunderskies · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Along with the NYT, I counted this as one of my own best reads of 2008--which was, by the way, a complete surprise, since the blurb struck me as wholly unexciting and almost pretentious. However, the book was a thorough delight: gorgeous, tragic, full of a lasting emotional resonance.

[kirstiecat · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Netherland is an interesting look at a man orginally from Holland who works between London and NYC. It's an interesting study and one man's take on the culture of the city surrounding 911, though it actually talks about cricket more than it talks about terrorism. Hans is a banker and lives in the Chelsea Hotel, which should sound more romantic but one gets the idea that he takes all his money for granted and doesn't relish every moment of his existence like some might leading the same one. Hans isn't a bad guy and he's intellectually astute in many ways, drawing comparisons between his old neighborhood and those of NYC and meeting a whole host of interesting men from various backgrounds and ethnicity, all bonding under the guise of their favorite sport, Cricket, which they think could become more popular than baseball.

He's also a man with a young son and a wife who would rather be anywhere else but NYC after 911. She doesn't feel safe and instead lets her extreme anxiety rule her decisions. Hans seems lost and lonely and this book is sort of about that but, at the same time, his difficulties and any emotional behavior seems also subdued...maybe it's a cultural thing.

I found that this book was quite intriguing but I think it suffered from one of the things many novels do-it just doesn't have a very likable protagonist. Hans isn't a bad guy but I can't really relate to a banker who thinks $6,000 a month rent in early 2000s is just petty change. It just doesn't sit well with me. It makes him unlikable...and also, difficult to relate to. Hans is not a common man dealing with a common man's struggle. Hans is a rich male banker and he's hard to feel sorry for. He's investing in oil and making a fortune. Yet, he doesn't seem to have any big ethical struggles with the amount of money he is making and how he is making it. He just goes with the flow so to speak.

Anyhow, worth reading, especially if you happen to love bankers from Holland.

Memorable quotes:

pg. 28 "My family, the spine of my days, had crumbled. I was lost in invertebrate time."

pg. 89 "...Manhattan was squarely revealed and guarded by colossal billboards, I pitched homeward into its pluvial lights."

...

"I was young. I was not much extracted from the innocence in which the benevolent but fraudulent world conspires to place us as children."

pg. 106 "A life seemed like an old story."

pg. 111 "I recall, also, trying to shrug off a sharp new sadness that I;m only now able to identify without tentativeness, which is to say, the sadness produced when the mirroring world no longer offers a surface in which one may recognise one's true likeness."

pg. 126 "I was thinking of the miserable apprehension we have of even those existences that matter most to us. To witness a life, even in love-even with a camera-was to witness a monstrous crime without noticing the particulars required for justice."

pg. 151 "The day itself was perforated by the rattle of a woodpecker."

pg. 173 "We are in the realm not of logic but of wistfulness, and I must maintain that wistfulness is a respectable, serious condition. Otherwise, how to account for much of one's life?"

pg. 204 "I'm saying that people, all people, Americans, whoever are at their most civilised when they're playing cricket. Whats' the first thing that happens when Pakistan and India make peace? They play a cricket match. Cricket is instructive, Hans. It has a moral angle. I really believe this....We want to have something in common with Hindus and Muslims?...With the New York Cricket Club, we could start a whole new chapter in US History."

pg. 212 "Love...is such an omnibus word."

pg. 247 "There was much smiling, pointing, physical intertwining, kissing. Everybody looked at the Statue of Liberty and at Ellis Island and at the Brooklyn Bridge, but finally, inevitably, everybody looked to Manhattan. The structures clustered at its tip made a warm, familiar crowd, and as their surfaces brightened ever more fiercely with sunlight it was possible to imagine that vertical accumulations of humanity were gathering to greet out arrival. The day was darkening at the margins, but so what..."

[rincey_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I understand why some people love this book so much, especially if they ever have lived in New York. The writing is beautiful and I found parts of the book to be really intriguing. However, as a whole, I felt I was just reading to read. I didn't feel invested and some of the stories seemed pointless. It's not a bad book by any means, but I didn't find it to be overwhelmingly amazing either.

[quixada_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

This guy can’t stop writing about cricket! And the fothermucker dissed baseball at one point. Instead of Netherland it should be called “Cricketland”. Or “About Cricket”. Or “Cricket, Cricket, and more Cricket”. Or “Everything You Never Wanted to Know About Cricket”. And the back of the book says absolutely nothing about cricket. Not one word. There should be a disclaimer: “Warning: this guy loves to write about cricket. If you do not like cricket or if cricket offends you in any way, step away from this book immediately”.Random paragraph from page 48:In the world of men’s cricket, I surprised myself. Aged thirty-four, troubled increasingly by backache, I found I could still fling the ball into the wicket-keeper’s gloves with a flat throw from forty yards, could still stand under a skyer and hold the catch, could still run up and bowl outswingers at a medium pace. I could also still hit a cricket ball; but the flame of rolling leather, caught up in long weeds, almost always was quickly put out. The bliss of batting was denied to me.ARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!I am off to purchase a cricket bat just so I can beat the shit out of this book with it.

[rdhawk6886 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Whistful ruminations of a Dutch immigrant in post 911 NYC. Best aspects of the book are the Trinidad sidekick and cricket obsession. The book offers an authentic, but not over the top, glimpse at an overlooked but insighful corner of our country.

[iftyzaidi · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Really enjoyed this book. Narrated from the viewpoint of a Dutch Wall Street analyst Hans Van Den Broek who moves to New York in 1999, the story follows the period post 9/11 when his marriage becomes frayed and his English wife moves back to London with their young son. Emotionally numbed and estranged both from his family and the unfamiliar city in which he lives, and increasingly, from his job, Hans' discovery of a cricket club (played mostly by immigrants) allows him him to discover both a sense of camaraderie, friendship (with a Trinidadian immigrant and Brooklyn hustler Chuck Ramkissoon) and a way to reconnect with his own childhood and memories. Chuck meanwhile is driven by a gloriously unlikely dream - to build a cricket ground in NY that would become the staging ground for international cricket clashes between the best teams in the world.Having for a short time been an immigrant studying in the USA as well as a cricketing aficionado, Hans' circumstances struck a real chord. Cricket is one of those odd sports which is virtually a religion in a handful of countries but almost absolutely unknown in the US. Almost but not quite, for the US is a also a country of immigrants and just as Hans does in the book, one can suddenly stumble upon a small group of cricket fans or an impromptu cricket match in the most unexpected nooks and crannies of the country. The realization sets in that there is a community with whom one has something in common - like a secret handshake, a love of cricket gives you access to a secret society hidden beneath the surface of everyday American life. So some of my fondest memories are of unlikely cricket matches played in an open field with a motley band of cricketers - mostly of Indian descent with a couple of Bangladeshis and Pakistanis and a solitary New Zealander. We managed to entice one of the natives to join us and of course he batted like a baseball player, using the long handle and swinging high and hard to send the ball soaring in to the air. I on the other hand preferred batting in a compact, restrained fashion, much like Hans in the book, playing the ball along the ground in the technically correct manner. In the book Chuck encourages Hans to play his shots with more abandon, urging him to play like an American and hit the ball up in the air.In many ways the story is about Chuck more than the Hans. Certainly he is the fizzing soul of the book, though it seems fitting to the tone of the book that the narrator is at the periphery of events. (Most of the major 'events' that occur in the book occur off-page as it were and are referred to only obliquely - whether 9/11 itself, Hans' reconciliation with his wife, his decision to move and most importantly Chuck's demise). Another reviewer has pointed out Chuck's evocation of James Gatz of The Great Gatsby, right down to an obsession with the green of the cricket ground he wants to build which seems to exercise the same fascination over him as the green light on the docks did for Gatz. Like Gatz's dreams, Chuck's dreams come to nothing in the end. But if in The Great Gatsby Gatz's move across the USA from the western state of North Dakota to the eastern one of New York is also his journey from a solid moral grounding to immoral crass materialism (and Gatsby's narrator, Nick Carraway's decision to leave New York to head out west a rejection of that same materialism), then what are we to make of Hans and Joseph's move from across the eastern seas to New York and Hans' final decision to move back to England? A reconnection with family and reconciliation and acceptance of his past perhaps? If so the Netherland of the title could be the New York Hans inhabits in his day-to-day life as a stock analyst and which he eventually leaves. There are other interpretations, of course, but one of the hallmarks of an evocative phrase is that it may have multiple meanings. The prose O'Neill uses is wonderfully crafted with wonderful turns of phrase which manage to contain both beauty and ambiguity (I was sometimes reminded of Ishiguro). Some may find that maddening, but I found it wonderful.

[opinionated_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

O'Neill's Blood Dark Track is one of the most interesting books I've read, so I expected a lot from Netherland - but for me, it didn't really deliver. One of the problems is that for a book structured around the idea that the ritual (rather than the sport) of cricket can be both a social unifier and a sea of calm in the emotional maelstrom of post 9/11 America, the narrator err....isn't very convincing on cricket. Its as though Death in the Afternoon was written by someone who hadn't seen a bullfight. This might be a bit harsh - but it seemed to me like a description of cricket written for the benefit of people of who don't understand it (ie Americans) rather than those who do (everyone else in the former British empire). As someone who does understand cricket, and living in a mainly non cricket playing country, missing its social element, I couldn't really believe in the narrator's voice - and so couldn't really believe in this central principle. So although other elements of the book - the characters at the Chelsea Hotel, the relationship with the over reaching Ramkissoon, the conflict between cold fish narrator and his politically awakening wife, are interesting, I ultimately couldn't care about them So a good idea, well written, which ultimately didn't quite work for me, however much I wanted it to. But worth reading

[harveybiggins · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It's billed as a novel about cricket. But it isn't really. There are a few other things it isn't (set in aftermath of 9/11, but with only passing reference to that, although one is aware of it). But it is quite an interesting read - it felt like it wasn't going anywhere after 50 or so pages, and none of the characters were particularly likeable. But despite this the book draws you in - and the quality of the writing sustains it.

[katiekrug · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As the author admits in an interview I read, this is more a novel of voice than one of plot. I won’t try to summarize what little actually does happen because it would sound crazy and turn you off. It’s like when I try to explain to people down here in Texas what I love about New York City – it’s dirty and loud and chaotic and sometimes scary – sure, it might sound awful but you really need to experience it for yourself. O’Neill has written a dense, genuine, and verging-on-heartbreaking-but-there’s-a-bit-of-hope-in-the-end portrait of alienation, identity, connectedness, and loss. The title has multiple meanings, and I think you could pick whichever resonates the most on a personal level and write a lovely review based on that one piece. But it’s a kaleidoscope of images and voices and emotions. And despite how some people want to categorize it, Netherland is not a book about 9/11. It is, maybe, a book of 9/11 in that I doubt the same story could have been written and had such resonance absent that event. It’s a book about the American Dream, as seen by a Dutch equities trader from London and a Trinidadian crook from Brooklyn. As the old hackneyed saying goes, “Only in New York…”

[papatrick_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I bought this book because I teach--and love--"The Great Gatsby" and many reviewers said that O'Neill was the new Fitzgerald. Though the novel was thoughtful and the characters, both well-developed and believable, it's clear O'Neill wasn't out to prove "The rich are different." Van den Broek, his narrator, has a detached Nick-Carraway, 1st-person viewpoint but Chuck Ramkissoon, the novel's Gatsby, is mostly the gangster side of Jay, the side that he denies to himself in pursuit of his idealistic dream of Daisy Buchanan. (Whimsically, Chuck's girlfriend is a very different kind of Daisy, but with the same name.) And Chuck's scrambling in 21st-century New York is also typified by the colour green--this time not the resonant symbolism of Daisy's dock light, to which Gatsby is seen 'praying' early in the novel, or the "orgastic future" Nick ruminates about at the novel's close, but a cricket green that Chuck wants to build overlooking the shoreline of New Jersey. O'Neill sees the outsider in Jay, not the noble knight misplaced nine centuries and stuck in a world in which his lady demands of him, not deeds of daring, but a closetful of bespoke shirts. So 'Chuck', like Jay, anglicized his name, dealt with lowlifes, all to realize the ineffable outsider's dream, but it's ethnic now, not necessarily class-related. His end is determined, but again not idealized. Both men's dreams are dead but Chuck's wasn't nearly so elevated in the first place.A good read--and O'Neill has some of Fitzgerald's poetic gifts of language, although put in service of no brilliant butterflies decorating the rolling lawns of Long Island. Fitzgerald's highly autobiographical novel wasn't intended to be a snapshot of America at the beginning of the highly materialistic 20th century but that's the critical judgment it has received. O'Neill with his 9/11 opening seems to be consciously trying for that snapshot almost a century later; it's difficult to imagine that "Netherland" will be read and studied 90 years into its future, unlike "GG".

[lynnb_64 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is a very interesting novel in that it uses the shock and disruption of 9/11 as a backdrop to the disruption in one man's life. But, not the major tragedies of losing loved ones that so many people lived through; instead, this book is about what probably most New Yorkers experienced -- no close family members killed, no major property loss, yet a fundamental shock and change to the life they thought they were living.Hans has moved to New York from London with his wife. After the 9/11 attack, she returns to London with their baby son, making it clear that Hans is not welcome to move with them. Rather, he is to visit every two weeks. So, we find Hans alone in a strange city that is, itself, feeling detached from its foundations. No surprisingly, Hans looks back and has strong memories of his mother and he begins to play cricket as he had done as a boy. This search for some link to his past brings him, in some ways, farther from it. He drifts into the New York cricket scene which is populated by recent African and Caribbean immigrants, notably Chuck Ramkissoon who becomes Hans' friend. Through Chuck, Hans is drawn into Russian culture, illegal gambling and various schemes. Yet, Hans remains somewhat outside of Chuck's world as he remains estranged even from his own life.The book is well written. Hans thoughts often wander, taking us with him. Mr. O'Neill is able to maintain the flow of the writing and the story through these digressions and jumps in time by his excellent writing, including a strong ear for dialogue. Some reviewers say nothing happens in this book. I disagree. Life happens; people touch each other in unexpected ways; and life goes on.

[theampersand · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent! "Netherland" is so many things at once. First, and perhaps most obviously, it's a book about men who play cricket in New York City. It's also that rarest of all things: a distinctly post-9/11 work that refuses to get unnecessarily hysterical or shamelessly sentimental. The author does not describe the events of that day, nor does he portray them as a world-ending catastrophe. "Netherland's" characters, like most New Yorkers, survived the attacks but were left in a city that was shaken and scared. In this novel, the attacks function mostly as a disruptive event that prompts new questions, and poses new challenges, for its survivors. Hans, our Dutch narrator, mostly seems inconvenienced: he didn't lose any friends or family members, but he's been moved out of his Tribeca apartment and into the Chelsea Hotel and he's just trying to get on with things. It's a remarkably level-headed depiction of the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, and it mirrors the experiences of most New Yorkers I knew more closely than just about anything else I've ever read in the past ten years. Writing from Hans's point of view, O'Neill seems to be asking if the safe, conventional, financially comfortable European life that his main character prepared for himself in Europe is all that is available to him. It's a question that preoccupied many of the modernist writers who wrote in the first half of the twentieth century, and I'm both pleased and surprised to see O'Neill take it up in a decidedly twenty-first century context. The attacks didn't just move Hans out his apartment, they also shook him loose from the web of cultural associations that he assumed would endure until well after his death. After his wife, who fears another attack, decamps to London with his son, he finds himself spending time with the Caribbean and African immigrants who make up New York's cricket clubs. O'Neill is good at tracing the way that cultural identities shift and blend in a thoroughly globalized city like New York, and I expect that many New Yorkers – native and otherwise – will recognize their city in this novel's pages. What really sets O'Neill apart from so many other contemporary writes who deal with similar material is what he makes of all of this delightfully promiscuous cultural exchange. Hans's willingness to connect, perhaps for the first time, with the different cultures and communities that make up his city is, at the end of the day, a far better response to the attacks of September, 2001 than his wife's decision to flee to the safety of her childhood home. "Netherland" is, among other things, a sort of blueprint for what a personal response to the cultural and religious absolutism of that motivated the terrorist attacks might look like. As a pluralist call-to-arms, it's both important and inspiring. It's also a very good novel. O'Neill's prose throughout most of the book is precise and restrained, a reflection, perhaps, of his narrator's upbringing. At its center, however, is Chuck Ramkisson, a Trinidadian of Indian descent, a first-generation American, an unlikely mentor to Hans, and one of the greatest bullshit artists I've ever met, fictional or otherwise. Verbose, ambitious, seductive, and self-confident to the point of grandiosity, he fairly leaps off the page. O'Neill is also very canny about how he presents Chuck to his readers, gradually revealing more and more about his business dealings, personal history, and inner life as his role in Hans's life grows in importance. In closing, I'd also like to mention that I read this novel expecting one of its characters to criticize baseball, the bat-and-ball game that I love, as nothing more than a degraded form of cricket. In a truly cosmopolitan act of tolerance, however, both O'Neill and his characters reserve their judgment. Chuck, in fact, dreams that Americans might one day play cricket in their own way. "This is the United States," he advises Hans, who is typically a stiff and timid batsman, "you've got to hit that thing in the air."

[gmehn_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A good, engaging read with perhaps the narrowest focus-- almost nothing happens, and what does (will) you konw already. At the same time, the unfolding of the relationship between this madly wealthy banker and his cricketing friends-- all New York immigrants, mostly poor and non-white-- is utterly moving. May be considered a bit "male" by some. Also, heavily about cricket.