Netherland: A Novel Reviews

• Cricket in Purgatory

  
  By A8IPQ1Q1O7YX5 on 2008-06-11
  The book jacket is entrancingly deceptive. Printed on what feels like watercolor paper, it shows a colored vignette of men in white playing cricket on a village green watched by spectators relaxing in the shade of a spreading chestnut tree. It could well be the nineteenth century, except that the skyline in the background is Manhattan, and Joseph O'Neill's novel is set in the first years of the present century. Written in a style of such lucidity that it might almost be an autobiographical memoir, it is the narrative of three years or so in New York City. The protagonist Hans van den Broek, a Dutch-born financial analyst, thirtyish and near the top of his profession, arrives there at the start of the millennium with Rachel, his English wife, herself a high-powered lawyer. But after the attacks of 9/11, Rachel returns to England with their infant son. Hans stays on.
  
  On one level, this is a novel of displacement. Having already relocated to London from Holland, Hans makes the further move to New York, where both he and Rachel prosper. But they have to evacuate their loft apartment after the attacks, and move into temporary quarters in the Chelsea Hotel, which is portrayed as an almost-surreal world unto itself. So Hans is essentially rootless before the story truly starts. By sheer chance, he stumbles upon the fact that cricket is played in New York by scratch teams of immigrants from former British colonies: Indians, Pakistanis, Caribbeans. Hans, who learned the game at an exclusive school in Holland, becomes the only white member of a team formed of taxi-drivers, store-keepers, and small businessmen, who offer him a kind of camaraderie that he cannot find among his professional colleagues.
  
  Although cricket is an important symbolic presence, it plays a relatively minor part in the action, and it is not necessary for the reader to know the game. At first, cricket is presented as a symbol of the immigrant subculture, the thing that both brings people together and emphasizes their differences from mainstream America. As a successful Wall Street banker, Hans might be expected to fit right into New York society -- and indeed the author makes the point that, as a Dutchman, he is actually a member of the historic first tribe of New York. But in soul-crushing scenes at the DMV and INS that might have been penned by Kafka, but which any victim of American bureaucracy will recognize, O'Neill does not spare Hans some of the worst aspects of the immigrant experience. Hans spends the first part of the book in a cultural limbo; when he joins the team, he find that most of his old skills come back, but he cannot bring himself to modify his patrician batting form in order to hold his own with players who learned in dirt lots; by his final American cricket game, he is hitting out with reckless abandon.
  
  The English have an expression, "It's not cricket," when something contravenes an unstated social law. Later in the book, Hans remarks: "I cannot be the first to wonder if what we see, when we see men in white take to a cricket field, is men imagining an environment of justice." That "imagining" is important; O'Neill gently suggests that America's image as the champion of justice has become tarnished in the last few years. But he is also framing the moral dichotomy of the novel. The other major character in the story is a Trinidadian immigrant, Chuck Ramkissoon, a Gatsby-like figure who thinks big and maintains a finger in every pie. At the very beginning of the book (which is all told in flashbacks), Hans learns of Chuck's death in what seems like a mob killing. But his first chronological appearance in the story is when, as the umpire for a cricket match, he defuses a potentially dangerous situation, and follows it up with a clubhouse speech that is both a defence of the highest ideals of cricket and a potential vision of America as the Promised Land. Chuck has grandiose plans to build an international cricket stadium in New York, and he enlists Hans into furthering his vision. But he also has shady activities on the side, whose nature only gradually becomes clear. In dealing with these two sides of Chuck's character, Hans gradually comes to re-examine his own moral sense, identity, and priorities.
  
  But NETHERLAND is no mere novel of ideas; it is also an emotionally wrenching love-story. For most of the book, the marriage of Hans and Rachel is virtually non-existent. When she leaves him, it is clear that she needs to escape more than the physical dangers of the bombed city. Hans flies to London every two weeks to see his son, but his relations with Rachel are painfully distant. And yet the novel opens some years later, with the two of them back together again, and apparently happy. Amazingly, O'Neill makes the fact that "you know how it all comes out" into a source of more tension, not less. The days in New York between Rachel's decision and her actual departure are agonizing and so so true. And even when Hans leaves America and returns to London for good, the story is far from over; there is love to be found, but it must be new-forged, and it does not come easily. At one point towards the end of his stay in America (in Las Vegas, no less), Hans talks of reaching absolute bottom. But it is not Hell that he has been through, rather a very special kind of Purgatory.
  
  The author Sebastian Barry, in a comment quoted on the back cover, writes: "The dominant sense is of aftermath, things flying off under the impulse of an unwanted explosion, and the human voice calling everything back." Without that human voice, this story might merely be an offbeat curiosity. But O'Neill, with his clear moral compass and extraordinary power of writing from the heart, has created what may be the most moving book I have read all year.
  
  

• Gorgeous words, sober phrases, unfulfilled centre

  
  By A24CILGYK8RFHD on 2008-05-26
  Every year brings out a '9-11' novel, usually by white people. Well, the pattern certainly has established its own genre requirements . . . an elegy for New York's global invulnerability, a meditation on American power dynamics, and the 'Babel' like intricacies of people, connections, debts, and destinations.
  
  _Netherland_ is definitely one of the best of the lot . . . much less self-conscious, in some respects, than previous offerings. The prose style is undoubtedly majestic, if borrowing more than a few cues from Fitzgerald in terms of vocabulary (and also means of death). Unquestionably, the incessant quest for the curious metaphor drives much of the writing style. WIthout exception, it's successful. Ornate observations, and twisty clauses of comparison and elegy for another New York, somewhere else, no longer anyone's to own. In particular, the 'Google Earth' sequence, in which the extremely symbolic cricket pitch is revisited virtually stands out as some extremely fine writing.
  
  But let's put aside the brilliance of the writing for a moment, as hard as that is to do. What is being said; here? For the most part, the work is yet another extended meditation on the mythic redemption of 'New York': the metropolis as real, symbol, and imaginary. The psychoanalysis of extreme urbanity doesn't really reach any philosophical heights, just a languishing capitulation . . . like all the 9-11 novels, these are wealthy literary people . . . the very kind whose lungs weren't scarred that day . . . who stand idly buy in metonymic reproach for policies that they quietly endorse by their very lifestyles. Housing prices up in the Hamptons? Sobbing sirens as the American Express building shakes? I suspect this book, for all its beauty, will twenty years from now feel very dated and confined by the zeitgeist parameters of its time.
  
  Where is O'Neill going with all this? I loved the way he led me by word and phrase, but the soul of the matter remains elusive. What he have instead if cricket, the under-appreciated sport that provides a technical gimmick (and quirky vocabulary) for injecting some culture into a rather prosaic tale of chasing love and clocks that won't turn back. Maybe you have to live in New York to feel part of O'Neil's ritualization of the landscape, but for me the work remained overly creedal in tone and perspective. Definitely not a Great Gatsby, despite the effort involved here.
  
  Still, an exceptionally well-written book, the ends in a slush pile. Unlike Gatsby, faced down drowned in the froth of a payback death, we get the bloated corpse first. Rather than the grandeur of a West Egg swimming pool, our anti-hero snorts drainage water . . . the antithesis to Fitzgerald's vision is obvious.
  
  

• A complex, fascinating story written in elegant, mellifluous prose

  
  By ASPJ8Z8WTPQEQ on 2008-05-20
  Reading this novel gave me great pleasure. In contrast to its plain cover, this marvelous novel, written in mellifluous and elegant prose, is complex; its world sprawling and vast, with mind-boggling depth. After reading only two pages, I found myself charmed by its narrator's voice, and my mind glued to its world.
  
  On the surface it is the story of its narrator, a banker named Hans van den Broek , born and raised in Netherlands, and working in London. While working in London in a bank, he meets an Englishwoman named Rachel and marries her. They have a son named Jake. In 1990's, they relocate to New York and live in TriBeCa. After the terrorist attack on the Word Trade Center on 9/11, however, they relocate again, and decide to live in the Chelsea Hotel. But Rachel's fear of another terrorist attack and the toxic political atmosphere in the United States create stress in their marriage, and the stress in turn compels Rachel to move with her son, once again, back to London.
  
  Underneath this story, there is another story about a Trinidadian named Chuck Ramkissoon. Ramkissoon is a shady character. He runs a fraudulent and illegal numbers racket. But like many men, even a man from the under-world, he has big ambitions and a dream of starting a world-class cricket field and cricket club in Staten Island and of turning cricket into a national sport in America.
  
  The third story inter-woven with the other two is the story of the game cricket itself and its ardent players at the Staten Island Cricket Club, immigrants from countries such as Sri Lanka, Trinidad, Bahamas, and other tropical countries. Mr. O'Neill weaves the three strands into a lovely braid, his lyrical prose serving as an adornment, like a rope of fragrant jasmine that often adorns a braid in tropical lands.
  
  The most striking feature of this novel, without a doubt, is Mr. O'Neill's elegant and flowing prose, smooth and free from jarring edges and ripples, and as lovely as the very best I have read in my fifty years of romance with the English language: "The day was thick as a jelly, with a hot, glassy atmosphere and no wind, not even a breeze from the Kill of Kull, which flows less than two hundred yards from Walker Park and separates Staten Island from New Jersey. Far away, in the south, was the mumbling of thunder. It was the kind of barbarously sticky American afternoon that made me yearn for the shadows cast by scooting summer clouds in northern Europe, yearn even for those days when you play cricket wearing two sweaters under a cold sky patched here and there by a blue tatter -- enough to make a sailor's pants, as my mother used to say."
  
  Mr. O'Neill's command over the English language is such that his long sentences have the miraculous property of never annoying the reader. In fact, they tickle the reader's mind and induce great pleasure.
  
  
  
  

• Disappointing

  
  By A1NPW1ICN2CU8L on 2008-06-14
  I read somewhere (in one of many spectacular reviews) that Joseph O'Neill is incapable of writing a boring sentence. Unfortunately, he also seems incapable of writing a simple one. If long, flowery lines about cricket, waiting to play cricket, waiting in line at the DMV, and riding on the train interest you, then this is the book for you. I suppose there's some deep meaning here, but it's buried in self-consciously elaborate sentences and a whole lot of narcissism. The words "purple upchuck" (Truman Capote's description of Thomas Wolfe's writing) come to mind. A real disappointment.
  
  

• Enormously Disappointing

  
  By A1GDT2ZT4RX09X on 2008-10-05
  That I am even writing this is evidence of my dislike. I have a million things to do, and yet, out of sheer disgust and disappointment, I must critique this work. That this earned the reviews it did, has made me more intrepid about reviving my own writing career. If this author, whose name I will never remember, since the work itself is immemorable, can write and get the reviews he did, so can I. So can You. So can my dog.
  
  If there were beautiful sentences, I missed them! You want beautiful sentences, read Fitzgerald, to whom this author, shockingly, erroneously, has been compared. Read Roth's Everyman, Llosa's The Bad Girl, Petterson's Out Stealing Horses. You want a substitute for Ambien, read this novel.
  
  My problem with this book is that I didn't care about the characters. Had I not recommended it for my book group, I wouldn't have finished it. (Having finished it, I can say I wouldn't have missed much!) Around page 175 I felt a twinge for the protagonist, Hans, the stirrings of feeling, but this didn't evolve into anything more significant. The female character was flat and unbelievable, which made Han's affection for her unbelievable. The Chuck character was uneven. He was like a sketch of a character. I felt as though the author didn't really know him. When, finally, something happens to him I thought, who cares? (Who's Chuck?)
  
  The narrator spends a lot of time telling about the events in his life. but he is a royal bore, thus, so were his exegeses. I would launch into one of these paragraphs, and, midway through, substitute blah, blah, blah.
  
  In my opinion, the author undertook a literary task that proved out of his league. He developed a depressed and disassociated first person narrator undergoing life altering experiences. Unlike say, Salinger or Roth or Petteron or Charles Baxter, he failed to make this narrator evoke feelings in the reader. There was a lot of telling in this book. I often had the impression the author himself wasn't intimate with his characters. I never got there.
  
  Based on the reviews I read everywhere I recommended this dull mass of words to my book group and I am embarrassed. I plan to fill the time talking about all the other good books I recently read.
  
  
  
  
• A European in New York City, Post 9-11
  By A3DK5X66XYMTHO on 2008-05-21
  Mr. O'Neill has published a rambling account of one family's encounter with the attacks upon the World Trade Center and its impact upon the marrage of Rachel and Hans van de Broek. The writing is riveting and compelling as Hans is the first person narrator who tells his story in a stream of consciousness. For the reader looking for a linear story, this is not that novel. But it is also a novel about cricket (the sport), the men who play it, and Hans' friendship with Chuck Ramkissoon of Trinidad. This opens up the novel to be a tale of New York City surviving 9-11. This is one of the few times where a book is too short.
  
  
• i read it twice--first in gulps, and then in sips
  By A1IHUPM1GQQ8GW on 2008-05-24
  This book has been reviewed so extensively and lavishly that I wonder if I actually have anything to add. Here is what I loved about Netherland: those of us fortunate enough to live in New York typically take great pleasure in the multiple layers of life and experience we find here. No matter who we are, we are constantly reminded that we are only one of thousands of unique stories walking the sidewalks of this city and riding the trains. Netherland is a beautiful reminder of this--it takes readers outside of their own experience and says, "Consider this!" I enjoyed it less for the 9/11 connection, which is not in my mind all that important to the plot, than for the reminder of what is extraordinary about this city. I galloped through the first reading, knowing full well I'd go back to savor it again. The writing really is lyrical--that is no exaggeration. Just when you think English has been fully exploited in all the most beautiful ways, along comes another writer who does it again. Many sentences have the humor and beauty of Mark Helprin at his best. Living in Chelsea makes this story special for me, but it will resonate with readers far afield for other reasons having to do with love, dreams, and dislocation. Don't miss it.
  
  
• Longwinded
  By A33MWLRH7MBTFN on 2008-08-27
  This book seemed to get great reviews from other people in the literary world as a profession, but as just a person who enjoys reading novels this book was not interesting. Yes, the author can use a lot of big words and flowery language, but that does not make the story good. I was extremely bored throughout this book, but forced myself to finish it (though it took a long time because I could not engage with the story), since I thought I must be missing something with all the hype. Now I don't think I am missing something, but that the book was. The long descriptions about cricket throughout the book also caused some serious skimming instead of real reading. I did not feel any strong connection with the characters, except maybe twice during some analyzing of the failing marital relationship. It is difficult to even describe this book, as the timeline jumped all over the place and the story had many strange characters and storylines. Not worth the money or time.
  
  
• An extraordinary achievement
  By A1XC6NAEF7RKZ0 on 2008-05-20
  O'Neill's novel is just marvelous. A poignant, funny and heart-wrenching account of events that unfold as a result of the 9/11 destruction of the World Trade Center. The fear, vulnerability and the sense of isolation that the attack exposes are palpable in passages of beautifully written prose. I found myself constantly pausing after paragraphs to reread and savor the author's descriptions.
  
  The New York he describes is as authentic as any I have encountered in a novel: dreaded trips to the DMV are as dreadful as can be--creepy "performance artists" at the Time Square subway station are even more oppressive than the suffocating maze undergoing renovation. These "netherlands" and New York's Hudson Valley the original New Netherlands are juxtaposed to the mile high skyscrapers and Tribeca lofts that domicile the newest colonists.
  
  Under the observant eye of Hans, a commodties analyst from the original Netherlands and his unlikely but entirely believable Trinidadian companion, Chuck, O'Neill explores the terrifying possibility of being alone in a city of eight million people. Loosely structured around their relationship to the game of cricket, Hans sets out to find something that will re-anchor and replace the sense of permanence he has lost.
  
  I will never again hear the upstate town of Poughkeepsie pronounced without recalling the author's description as merry childish blurting. I probably will never go on Google Earth without experiencing something of the futility Hans feels as he "travels" to England each night to try to be near to the son who has gone home with Hans's wife. The technology, like his emotions will only let him get so close to family he aches for.
  
  The entire book is what fiction does best: it is new and familiar at the same time. These characters are strangers and different yet just the same as yourself. Some reviewers have made a comparison Fitzgeralds's Gatsby which is apt. But for me, Joseph O'Neill's Netherland conjured up EM Forster's admonition in Howard's End: "Just connect....connect!".
  
  
• There are books and there are books...
  By A16JKCJYYMFA61 on 2008-10-21
  I was excited to read this book. So excited, in fact, that I went from bookstore to bookstore until I found a store that had a copy. And when I did! The feeling was not unlike a hunter stumbling upon the one sickly beast among a wild herd. There it was. My safari, success.
  
  Proud, as I was, I took my trophy home. I waited until I had some time. Free time. Time in which I would not be bothered by anyone; no friends, no expectations. Nothing. The reputation of this book was that great. Life-changing, one particular review had said. Voice of a the post-9/11 Generation, said yet another.
  
  So there I sat. My bed. My quiet. The night was warm. Was it warmer than usual? I don't know. But the night was mine and I was free to read as many pages as I could get through until my tired eyes finally closed. Though, realistically, I had expected to keep reading on through until the wee hours.
  
  Thus, I began.
  
  And reading through those first few sentences, then paragraphs, then pages something in me turned over. A knot, perhaps, a tying up of some sinew somewhere in my gut. Something was off. But what? What was causing the twitching, that nausea invading my stomach? Something was not right. But what was it?
  
  Gasp! Could it be? I looked down at my hands and sure enough, there was my answer. It was the book. Well, not so much the book itself as the writing. The author, it seems, has come from a school of thought in which to get to a point, you must write in a hazy cloud of talk and backtalk. Where a point expressed isn't expressed until it is, thought about, and then, perhaps, expressed again. It is ugly writing. Aesthetically unpleasing, to say the least.
  
  If you try to read the book, instantly you'll know what I mean.
  
  I don't care how good a story is. I don't care if the author mentions 9/11 in passing or fully exploits the tragic events of that horrific day. If the writing is poor the work suffers and the readers (like me) return the book. Which I did. At Borders. Because for as much as I would have liked to read a highly-recommended story having to do with our beautiful post-9/11 world, I, for the life of me, could not get through all the commas. Actually, I counted them and told the number to my girlfriend. Who put down the book she was reading and said, "that's a lot."
  
  It was a lot. In fact, too much.
  
  Perhaps I missed something, but when a writer does something like that, constantly mending and shaping a sentence until the he thinks point is reached, by then the point is lost (see what I mean?). So much for clear and direct, eh? Add in some big words and over-described descriptions, and only then does the message become clear. The writer is reaching for something that is, perhaps, not there.
  
  One star.
  
  
• The ending left a lot to be desired
  By A21NVBFIEQWDSG on 2008-05-22
  In Joseph O'Neill's Netherland, Hans van der Broek is a Dutch-born/English resident who follows Rachael, his lawyer-wife to New York for a two-year stay. There he has no trouble landing a job as an oil banker/analyst.
  
  The novel opens with the van der Broeks' departure and by page five, they are back in England, trying to make sense of some sad news. It seems that a reporter for the New York Times has called them to get some information on Hans' Trinidadian friend and mentor, Chuck Ramkisson, whose handcuffed "remains" have been found. Foul play is suspected.
  
  From that revelation, the novel borders on a touch of mystery as it weaves back and forth (where O'Neill shows off his skill as a writer) between Hans' stay in America and his current life in England. But that thread of plot line is extremely limited.
  
  Not long after the van der Broeks' settle into Manhattan, 9/11 occurs. They are forced to move into the Chelsea Hotel where their martial problems mount. Soon Rachel takes their son and returns to Britain to live with her parents.
  
  Left behind, Hans stumbles his way onto a cricket field and meets Chuck. It seems there is an entire subculture of immigrant cricket players all over the peninsula. Chuck's dream is to reclaim cricket as America's original sport and remove its immigrant-stereotype shroud.
  
  Speaking of stereotypes, O'Neill does a fabulous job in placing his novel nowhere near the typical New York scene. I saw a New York that I had never seen before. I also know more about cricket and what it takes to have the perfect playing field than I ever wanted to know.
  
  The long, winding, and often rambling sentence structure functions as the gateway to the novels themes of disconnectedness and disenfranchisement. Still, the only thing that kept me reading was to know more about how Chuck ended up face down in a drainage ditch.
  
  To say I was disappointed in the ending is an understatement. It was flat, and when I turned the final page, I was surprised to learn the story was over. No big aha moment, no epiphany, just a guy moseying through life.
  
  Armchair Interviews says: Heed this reviewer's comments.
  
  
  
  
• It still escapes us...
  By A13F1RPU3EA1GJ on 2008-06-22
  If you are, like the rest of us, still searching for that post-9/11 epic that perfectly evokes the Zeitgeist of our present time, you will certainly be, as I was, disappointed with Mr. O'Neill's novel "Netherland." What the New York Times Book Review lauded as "Post 9/11, a New York of Gatsby-Size Dreams and Loss" is certainly a misleading epithet if not a downright lie. Indeed, comparing Mr. O'Neill's book to F. Scott Fitzgerald's chef-d'oeuvre is committing a terrible travesty. As critic Dwight Garner writes: "Joseph O'Neill's `Netherland' is not [the definitive 9/11] novel. It's too urbane, too small-boned, too savvy to carry much Dreiserian sweep and swagger." The novel's most apparent shortcoming is the static nature of its characters. Even the enigmatic, quote-unquote "Gatsby-like" character in the book--Chuck Ramkissoon--comes across as insipid, one-dimensional, and horribly banal. His cliché motto, "Think fantastic," is a far cry from Fitzgerald's complex and multi-layered characterization of Jay Gatsby. Although non-linear plots are a common phenomenon in modern literature, the plot of O'Neill's book is desultory, capricious, and irritatingly coreless. Whereas the disjointed plot of "The Great Gatsby" comes across as remarkably fluid owing to Fitzgerald's masterful style (a combination of short, concise descriptions, compelling dialogue, and lyrical passages), "Netherland" lacks cohesion as a result of underdeveloped characters, prosaic dialogue, and a writing style that vacillates between average and very good. The best (and worst) feature of "Netherland" is, of course, the many historical allusions that Mr. O'Neill makes to events of modern times: 9/11, the Israeli-Hezbollah War, the Great Blackout of 2003, the Iraq War, the failures of the Bush Administration, etc. "Netherland"'s most distinctive trait is, by far, the inclusion of these contemporary events into the narrative of Hans van den Broek. However, like many aspects of the book, these allusions seem too superficial and deliberate. For someone who professes multiple times throughout the story that he is not politically conscious, Hans seems uncannily aware of the politics of the post-9/11 era. It seems to me as though Mr. O'Neill constructed the "spirit of the times" around the story and not vice versa. That is to say he wrote the book from top-down instead of from the bottom up. This is ultimately why "Netherland," although an interesting attempt at evoking the post-9/11 Zeitgeist, fails to compel or captivate the reader.
  
  
• Troubled in NYC (3.25 *s)
  By A1LKSZ9CYJ6829 on 2008-07-18
  Set in post-9/11 New York, this novel is principally concerned with an unsettled Hans van den Broek, a native of Holland and a well-known oil investment analyst. His fragile mental state is not helped when his wife Rachel takes their son back to London, using the uneasiness of the times as an excuse.
  
  Far from being a hard-core realist that one would assume about a securities analyst, Hans seems to be in a perpetual state of disconnection, constantly musing about his past or some present-day situation. He fortuitously connects with a group of cricket-playing Caribbeans and Asians, falling under the sway of Chuck Ramkissoon, native of Trinidad and generator of grandiose money-making schemes including the building of a cricket arena on an abandoned airfield. Ordinarily, an upper-middle classer would not associate with immigrants barely scratching out livings, but it seems to be an antidote to Hans' rootlessness.
  
  The book moves rather haltingly as Chuck drags Hans to the "nether" regions of New York to tend to his various flakey ventures, while Hans' ruminations are generously interspersed.
  
  While not a 9/11 book, per se, the general impact is mirrored in Hans' struggles. The net effect of the book is hard to pin down, but he manages to muddle through and returns to London and his family. For the reader, like for Hans, the journey is more important than the end point.
  
  
  
• A Happy Ending for the West
  By A246YDUT97UJ9N on 2008-07-05
  There is a lot to recommend in Netherland: Joseph O'Neil's elegant and propulsive prose, a magnificent tour of New York past and present, and a peek into the world of cricket. As intoxicating as these pleasures are, it's the narrative they embellish that proves the richest and most provocative element of Netherland. Here's the story in a nutshell: three-member family in crisis + high-rolling Wall Street dad + 9/11 + walk on the wild-side = family denouement. Sound familiar? How about an eerie echo of Don DeLillo's Falling Man? DeLillo isn't the only American author O'Neil finds ways to contact: There is Mark Twain: the relationship of the two main characters Hans and C. Ramkissoon bears a striking resemblance to Huck Finn and Jim, even though Ramkissoon also bears a striking resemblance to Jay Gatsby. Then there's the special men's world of cricket resonating with Bernard Malamoud's The Natural. What makes the novel so special is Joseph O'Neil's ability to dig into a long-standing American theme like race or sports through a technique of slipstreamed multiple narratives that complicate and update the vitality of those narratives. There's noting easy in the updates either: no happy ending to Hans and C. Ramkissoon's relationship; the lost-and-found Eden of The Natural transformed into the civilizing outcome of brutal empire. In both the overall similarities and the cracks of difference, O'Neil provides a methodology to expand meaning beyond the words on the page and suggest a space for the reader to do what readers do best: create meaning.
  
  Nowhere is the density or the troubling position of O'Neil's metaphors so finely etched as in the brilliant final set-piece, which takes place at the London Eye. At first glance, the choice of setting signifies the engineering and architectural triumph of the "New London," but exploring just a bit will reveal the Eye as part of the Millenial year, a celebration of the upcoming third (Christian) millennium. Not to stop there, Hans tracks all the way back to Greece, noting the sunset as "Phoebus...up to his oldest and best tricks." I'm guessing you're starting to see the picture. Unlike the grim detente of a new social order that closes Falling Man, O'Neil provides for a completely plausible happy ending for his family. There is certainly no greater testimonial to the lasting mythos and continuing resilience of the West than this scene of familial re-unification across generations. Don't get me wrong. O'Neal isn't pandering to Hollywood here; he's sharing the complicated world of his desire and asking you to come clean, to make a decision about the meaning of his book. Either you buy into the very idea of a happy ending and find sustenance in the forces of history and the peculiarly Western idea of progress, or you don't and read Netherland as boosterism for a culture that has wandered onto the dust bin of history without even knowing it. I'm still deciding. (That's a good thing.)
  
  
• FLYING DUTCHMAN
  By AAE2DUEMTR30I on 2008-07-29
  We have to be careful with ethnic stereotypes these days, but perhaps it can be suggested without giving offence that the image of the Dutch bourgeoisie is one of rationality, level-headedness and emotions under control. Almost without exception in my experience, their command of English is perfect and they fit perfectly into careers in English-speaking nations. The narrator of Netherland is exactly such a Dutchman. In his career he is an effortless high-flyer, when separated from his wife and child he flies fortnightly to London from Niew Amsterdam to visit them without a financial qualm or any seeming sense of fatigue or jet-lag, he joins his family at a moment's notice and without any apparent change of pace in a holiday in Kerala, and his receptive imagination takes flight to Trinidad as well.
  
  What is striking about Hans is that although a lot happens to him he is never the initiator of anything that happens. First his marriage falls apart, then by the end of the book it is getting together again, but his wife is the driver of both events. Intelligent, thoughtful and successful he may be, capable of a formidable amount of emotional resilience too, but tagging along like a tame dog in his wife's turbulent wake. Three extra-marital liaisons are mentioned, one in some detail. In this the woman seduces him, and when she then breaks off contact that's that and she is never even mentioned again. With the other two it seems to have been a similar story. Nothing of this nature is anywhere near as important to him as the game of cricket it seems. If anything in this superb novel strikes me as a little overdone it is the lengthy and loving musings on the great sport of the British Empire. It is only quite recently that I became aware that Holland and Ireland are making determined efforts to break into the imperial monopoly. Just how deep-rooted their love of the game is I am now beginning to understand from this tale put into the mouth of a Dutchman by an Irish author.
  
  Cricket in America seems to be a game for either English émigrés (as in Waugh) or immigrants (as here). It is starting to follow soccer in being a big-money game, but the place where the money is to be made is clearly not the USA but India. Apart from the marriage/family theme, the other main narrative is of Hans's partial involvement, typically cautious, prompted and reactive on his part, with a cricket-minded immigrant entrepreneur who strongly recalls Gatsby, not least in the man's fate mentioned at the outset and partially explained near the end. I did not really find anything amounting to a theme with regard to 9/11 or the conflict in Iraq. They are mentioned because that is the timeframe in which the story is set and it would have been rather coy if they had not been referred to in a story largely taking place in New York, but the mentions are brief and incidental. It is true that Rachel cites the post-9/11 atmosphere as her reason for taking their son away from New York, but I fancy it's clear enough that if it had not been for that reason she would have found another.
  
  This is the unfinished tale of a man whose emotions are genuine and deep - unfinished not (I hope) in the sense that there is going to be a sequel but because if anything is clear from the sequence of events here it is that neither Hans nor anyone else is likely to carry on from where the book leaves off in any placid nirvana. Hans's main characteristic is rationality. He is truthful with himself and can face up to his own shortcomings as he perceives them, but he is probably a bit too rational for his own good. If his life is going to be happy or fulfilled (whatever the latter might be in his case) that will only be so if others allow it to be. I found the whole novel to be one of the best and most involving that I have had the privilege of reading in years. I'm not myself inclined to read allegories or social/political messages into it. What this book possesses, for me, is human truth. The characterisation is exceptionally convincing, and it is helped by writing that I would describe as being of the highest quality. I do not normally have any great problem in putting novels down, but I certainly did with this one.
  
  
• struggling to finish
  By A13A6ZMJU9SKET on 2008-09-13
  I'm more than halfway through this book, but I'm having a hard time finding the motivation to finish it. I agree that there is far too much focus on the sport of cricket, but worse, this book is weighed down by its sentimental, overly complex prose. It became tedious to read. Every word, every sentence is anguished over. But not in a good way -- the writing is filled with bombast. The other problem I had is that I couldn't connect with the main character. He was not very sympathetic.
  
  
• A Beautiful Novel
  By ACGPHRUPDRGCS on 2008-06-03
  I am a high school English teacher, and this is one of the rare books to be written in the last few years that I can definitely see appearing on someone's syllabus. For O'Neill has written a beautiful novel that holds tremendous insight into the human condition, contains amazing descriptive power, and makes poignant sense of our contemporary world. Woven throughout is the sport of cricket, which acts as a metaphor for the decline of a certain lost ideal, an ideal of hope still held in the minds of the panoply of immigrants that populate this tale, even as they see the ideal falling apart around them. Also, it's hard to put down (suspense is not a bad quality for serious fiction!). Perhaps it does take a foreign narrator to make sense of the confusion that is America. For readers of literary fiction, this novel is certainly a must read.
  
  
• At least now I know a little more about cricket
  By ANK8DO77PDJMQ on 2008-06-14
  I really wanted to like this book. I had read reviews calling it an intelligently written and thoughtfully conceived novel about NYC post 9/11. Also knowing that the main character became intrigued with the crazy patchwork quilt of immigrant Brooklyn convinced me to try it. Now having read it, I agree with all of the reviews on Amazon and elsewhere that it is wonderfully written. And also agree that there really is too much cricket, for even a reader interested in learning more about it. I liked all of the Brooklyn color and the fabulous Chelsea Hotel setting, with the great quirky cast of characters. Even liked his accurate depiction of life as a research analyst working for a large bank. But what really disappointed me about this book (though I should have expected from all of the fawning mainstream reviews) was the mind numbing amount of navel gazing and wistfully self absorbed carrying on. Tons of self pity disguised as some form of post modern traumatic stress combined with entering adulthood fears (made worse by the loss of his parents), plus every childhood memory over analyzed. Add to that the whiny read-between-the-lines-post-9/11-living-in-America-is-so-strange tone, and I would normally have given up half way through. The only thing that made me want to finish it was the curiosity about the murder mystery which formed the entire "hook" of the NYC portion of the novel. SPOILER ALERT: which is not solved. So if you like reading for the sake of marveling at the sentence-constructing skill of the author, you'll be happy. If you really want all of that plus a great story, you'll probably be disappointed. But you will know more about cricket.
  
  
• Best novel I have read in manyyears
  By A11QP7ANI8DQGS on 2008-07-07
  I loved this book. I lack the patience to read many novels but the greatness of the writing in this book overwhelmed my frustration with fiction, much of which is either too simplistic or too self-conscious.
  
  I didn't see this book, as others have, as a "9/11 in NYC" book. Not even close. It can be read on one level as simply the narrative of a man's thoughts about two important relationships in his life and no more, and in that basic frame, it is gorgeously written, and soars at the end (which to me contrasted favorably with Oscar Wao, the one other excellent novel I read this year, which felt anticlimatic at the end, as if the author had to force an ending because the book had reached a certain point where there was nowhere better to go). In this context, New York City is just a place where most of it happens and the 9/11 references are almost obligatory and the book would have seemed strained had it not made some.
  
  Then, of course there is the level at which it is a meditation on the idea of America in a post-9/11 world and the ironic retelling of the Gatsby story in the form of a hustler from Trinidad, and the analogue between the reconciliation between spouses with different attitudes toward the US and the need for America to reconcile with its best self were imaginative and deeply satisfying approaches to the question of the American identity in the 21st century. In this frame, the 9/11 references are of course there but the issues raised are not "9/11 in NYC" issues as much as they are "Iraq" and "Bush / Cheney Scalia destroying civil liberties" issues which are broad American issues put in play by what happened on 9/11. Such that "9/11" is more like the plot developments in a Chekhov play, or the Macguffin in a Hitchcock movie, than the focal point of the book.
  
  I thought the other reviews of this book were extraordinarily incisive and far better than what one usually sees in this website. I think that in itself testifies implicitly to the excellence of the book. As to whether this book will stand the test of time, who knows, but it is the best novel I have read in several years.
  
  
• Post 9/11 Mileu...again
  By A114YQ7ZT9Y1W5 on 2008-08-11
  Joseph O'Neill's elegant novel about an English cricket player in post-9/11 New York is an interesting, though ultimately superficial and topical portrait of a Gatsby-esque friendship between a Dutchman and Trinidadian who go into business together. Hans' wife is leaving him and is disgusted with the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The writing falls into the pitfalls of polemics; Rachel's diatribe against the war on terror is a flat and contrived bit of historical tagging. There are finely crafted moments of narration, with many elegant descriptions of New York. But Netherland is a slim and uninteresting little book with unlikely scenarios and dialogue, and the relationships are manipulated for the sake of O'Neill's artificial political posturings.
  
  
• Uneven and frustrating
  By A1KA46X455HGOG on 2008-09-25
  "Netherland" is a book that received very positive reviews from major newspapers as well as this web site. It always is a cause for reflection when one's opinion runs contrary to "experts" but I believe this book fails to live up to a five star rating.
  
  I feel the writing is uneven, mannered and more focused on the technical elements of the fiction rather than its substance. The narrator can be an annoying and petulant presence and when he bemoans the number of friends and acquaintances (not to mention his wife) who leave him or fail to maintain contact, it is not hard to understand why.
  
  There were times when I wondered whether I wanted to finish it but abandoning a book in mid-read has been a rare occurrence for me. There was a redemption, of sorts, in the final chapter (the book is divided into three chapters.) The author began to write in a freer and more relaxed fashion and with greater emotion. It actually felt like someone else had picked up the pen or, at the least, the author had decided to get to the heart of the matter.
  
  There may be a time when I am willing to give this book a second read but,overall, I see it only as a partially successful effort.
  
  
  
  
• As good as it gets
  By A3FMRJVCRR11YQ on 2008-05-25
  Here is a writer firing on all cylinders. Joseph O'Neill's novel is extraordinary on a number of levels. It is a clever, brave, humourous and philosophical take on the messy business of simply getting through life. Its motley assortment of characters, while unconventional, are completely believable. The novel is also a densely layered homage to New York: all the city's historical, geographic and ethnic eccentricities swirl and flow like a mighty river, fascinating and familiar. Nor is O'Neill afraid to venture beyond the 5 boroughs, his story transports the reader to places as disparate as Holland and Arizona, Trinidad and London, swooping confidently back and forth in time. Finally, O'Neill's language is gorgeous: every sentence a jewel. This is a book that pulls off the feat of challenging the reader while at the same time presenting a multitude of rewards in almost evey page. It is one to be re-read and savoured.
  
  
• Breathtaking and Brilliant
  By A3O62OXYDS44UX on 2008-06-24
  'Neverland' is one of the finest books I have read in the past several years. Its prose is beautifully crafted. Its structure complex and satisfying. Its story deep and meditative. You will think of it for weeks after you have read its last sentences.
  
  'Netherland' is a post-911 book. Set after the catastrophe, a Dutch born equities analyst named Hans, and Rachel his English barrister wife are pushed out of their lower Manhattan home. They take up an unsatisfactory residence in the Chelsea Hotel. Rachel decides that she must return to England with their young son. The obstensible reason is that New York is no longer safe. However, on a deeper level their marriage is unraveling. The story focuses on Hans as he struggles to come to terms with the sense of dislocation he feels in the wake of his wife and son's departure. He meanders around New York City when he is not working amidst the hordes of immigrants who populate the City, and he becomes involved with the charismatic and enigmatic Chuck Ramkissoon when he decides to take up cricket once again, the beloved game of his youth. Cricket becomes a metaphor for the dislocation of the foreigner in American, and Chuck's desire to build a cricket stadium and begin a fad for cricket in America becomes a symbol of the New American Dream.
  
  As Fitzgerald's " The Great Gatsby' is the novel of the American Dream of his time, "Neverland" is a paen to the New American Dream of the post 911 world. In shifting time perspectives we are taken to Brooklyn, a 'netherland' of new immigrants; to The Hague where Hans was born; to modern day post 911 London and to the Trinidad of the young Chuck Ramkissoon. This brilliant novel challenges our notions of America's place in the world, and our notions of love and forgiveness
  
  Definitely a most read. It can be compared with Ian McEwan's recent novel 'Saturday'.
  
  
• "How do you re-imagine your life?"
  By AAIL33CYCT47J on 2008-07-11
  When I first read about "Netherland" it was presented as a 9/11 novel. This is not entirely the case. In fact, 9/11 the day barely figures into the plotline at all - it is the tumultuous after-effects of 9/11 that are explored in Joseph O'Neill's infinitely clever, if flawed, novel. At the outset we meet Hans van den Broek in present-day London, where he has recently relocated in order to rejoin his wife and son after a trial separation. He gets some sad news regarding Chuck Ramkissoon, a former friend of his from his days as a single man reeling from 9/11 angst and his family's abrupt departure, news which sets Hans off on the reverie that is the plot of "Netherland". In his mind he retraces the years after that fateful September in 2001, when his happy marriage began to crack and, literally, split apart, he lost interest in his successful career, and a desperate loneliness led him into a friendship with the charismatic but morally suspect Chuck Ramkissoon. Through Hans' odyssey O'Neill does not explore 9/11 so much as he explores life in the post-9/11 world. But that is not all; O'Neill also delves deeply into the immigrant experience and the psychological effects of adopting another country as your own.
  
  "It is truly a terrible thing when questions of love and family and home are no longer answerable." After finding himself abandoned and confused, Hans begins a quest to rediscover himself. It all starts with something most New Yorkers - most Americans, in fact - would not even notice in their everyday life: cricket. Hans discovers a cricket league formed mostly by cab drivers and such who moved to the US from countries where cricket was a regular pastime. Hans has been unmoored in his own life, so he welcomes the opportunity to revisit a beloved sport and, through it, he attempts to put his life back into perspective - to regain the sense of control that has been stolen from him ("what was an inning if not a singular opportunity to face down, by dint of effort and skill and self-mastery, the variable world?"). Hans quickly discovers that cricket in New York is very different from the European version of the game he is accustomed to, and with this metaphor intact O'Neill uses American cricket to explore the larger theme of immigration: what compromises are made, what are the sacrifices, and what aspects of the self are lost when one moves from one country to another? What does one find? What are the gains? It's actually rather fascinating. Were this and Hans' desolation as he wanders alone in the city the primary focus of the novel it would have been better.
  
  Unfortunately, O'Neill is more interested in introducing Chuck Ramkissoon, a Trinidadian émigré who schemes to bring cricket to the forefront of the American consciousness, and a fortune to himself in the process. His is the more traditional, prosaic tale of one man's desperation for the American dream - heightened by the fact that as an immigrant, Chuck feels like he is only seeking what he was promised, but nevertheless the plotline feels stale and unimaginative. And that is particularly disappointing because the rest of "Netherland" sparkles with originality and wit. When it inevitably comes to light that Chuck has been dealing with shady characters to make his American dream a reality, sealing his fate once and for all, it is not terribly surprising or compelling. It's too fitting, really.
  
  "Netherland" is at its best when it is telling Hans' story, and it is unfortunate then that the bulk of it is tied up so intimately with Chuck's story - because Hans' journey is infinitely more effecting and touching. Still, O'Neill proves to be a remarkably talented writer, and it will be interesting to see what his next move is.
  
  Grade: B
  
  
• netherland
  By A15JX1TW5LNZIS on 2008-07-21
  This plot of this novel is well summarized by other reviewers, so I will limit myself to only a few comments. The plot itself is rather simple and revolves around three immigrants to New York City. Dutch-born Hans (a securities analyst) and his British wife Rachel (a lawyer) who separate and eventually reunite, 9/11 having disrupted their lives and called into question its meaning. In the midst of this, Hans' best friend and cricket associate Chuck - a Trinidadian immigrant - is found murdered.
  
  There is not much action in this novel... Much of it is devoted to the rather droll and, in my opinion, uninteresting contemplations of Hans, who functions as the voice of the novel. Hans and his wife are rather self-absorbed, depressed people of privilege. Mr. O'Neill does a nice job of juxtaposing them against Chuck - a man of humble origins but with boundless (and, at times, criminal) ambition.
  
  As other reviewers have pointed out, Mr. O'Neill's prose is rather baroque. At times this can be poetic and engaging, but after awhile can become tiresome.
  
  Also, there must be a dozen or so product placements for a major soft drink company's (coca-cola) products in this book. Mr. O'Neill should be ashamed of himself for allowing the artistic value of his work to be diminished in this fashion.
  
  
• Beautiful and Moving
  By A33TBJYHD4935U on 2008-08-06
  "Netherland" is a beautiful and moving story about the fragility of the lives we build for ourselves, of our sense of personal identity and of our connectedness to the world at large. As everyone knows by now, the story is set in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 and turns on the (temporary) marital breakup of Dutch-born Hans van den Broeck, who finds himself rootless and at a loss in New York. Hans is the character we identify with and the one through whose eyes we see the world, but probably the more memorable figure from the book is Chuck Ramkisoon, the Trinidadian would-be Gatsby, a swindler type, who dreams of creating a professional cricket empire in the States. The interplay between what "isn't cricket" and what is ties together the theme and plot of the book throughout, and O'Neil handles the non-chronological structure of the book to very good effect. "Netherland" is really one of the best novels I've read in years, and unlike the badly over-hyped potboiler "Edgar Sawtelle" this book really lives up to expectations.
  
  
• Awful
  By A35ZEUR3QUXEX7 on 2008-11-21
  I tried and tried to like this book. It is a book that is written to show off the authors use of the Enlish language. The characters are unlikable. All of them. He even managed to make a colorful guy like Chuck boring. The narrator, yes we understand the Dutch are stereotyped as unemotional, is a zombie and floats through 9/11, separation from his wife and son and the death of his closest friend in NY with no believable reaction. The author claims that Hans is angry, upset and hurt, but the jumble of vocabulary words and drawn out paragraphs that hop back and forth between time and space make you forget that the character is experiencing something and gets you lost in the maze of prose. The descriptions of New York are the most interesting part of this book. I was not aware that cricket was played in Staten Island, but then does there really need to be a 260 page book written just to tell us that?
  
  
• An English professor's dream?
  By A2VJSBY7Q88QHP on 2008-12-13
  I should have counted the number of words I ought to have looked-up while reading Joseph O'Neil's "Netherland." They must have numbered at least one hundred. Not a bad trick to play on someone with a masters from an Ivy League university. Also, there were those inordinately complex sentences that I needed to reread at least three times to get their full meaning. Perhaps, an English professor's dream and the basis for an excellent literary essay. But the makings for a great novel? I think not, without a good plot and character development to back up those fancy words and sentences. I am perplexed why this book has been selected by The New York Times as one of the ten best books of the year and how it made the cut for the Man Booker Prize's long list. Apparently, all the reviewers were mesmerized by Mr. O'Neil's literary style to the point that they overlooked other ingredients normally associated with a good book. For me, "Netherland" was simply boring and pretentious. I plodded through to the end but then wondered why I had bothered.
  
  I decided to read "Netherland" because it has been described as a post-9/11 novel. There are several references in this book to the emotional impact of 9/11 on New Yorkers and on the main character Hans whose wife uses the threat of future terrorist acts as a pretext to move back to London along with their son. A book that I found much richer in its discussion of 9/11 was "A Thousand Veils." It tells about a lawyer, totally immersed in the corporate greed of Wall Street, whose last-minute escape from the North Tower leads him to question his values and results in his life-changing decision to assist an Iraqi refugee. This is a much more satisfying solution than Hans' response in the aftermath of the crisis to bury himself in the game of cricket.
  
  
  
• O'Neill - a magnificent talent for story telling
  By A1D89YVPW07JUN on 2008-05-25
  I am an admirer of Ian McEwan's ability to suck the reader into the web he creates in his stories.
  I think O'Neill's talent surpasses that of McEwan.
  
  Netherland is story-telling at its best. The very personal story narrated to us in this novel is nominally
  about a man's lifelong involvement with cricket. As an American reader who doesn't even have much of an idea of what cricket is about, how can I become so immersed in this narrative? Nevertheless, it happens.
  
  
• The Limit is Cricket
  By A33HIQR1X1G4GI on 2008-07-05
  1t's 2006 and six-foot-five equity analyst Hans van den Broek and his barrister wife Rachel are back together in London with their son Jake after a separation, when Hans gets a phone call from the New York Times. The reporter on the other end of the phone tells him Khamraj Ramikisson has been found dead in the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn. He'd been murdered. He had been handcuffed, his body had been rotting in filth and stink for two years.
  
  From there Hans goes on to remember his life in New York following the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. He and his family had been forced to move from their home to the famous Chelsea Hotel, but only a month later Rachel takes Jake back to London, she's unhappy with both the American government and her husband.
  
  Hans stays behind, living life and observing people in the Chelsea in sort of a stupor, then one day he sees a cricket bat in a taxi and is taken back to the sport of his youth in Holland. He joins a Staten Island team.
  
  One day an angry bowler starts throwing at Hans' head and the umpire tosses the bowler out of the game, then stands up to a fan with a gun who disagrees with his decision. The ump is a Trinidadian, two decades older than Hans named Khamraj Ramikisson, who goes by the name of Chuck.
  
  Chuck is a hustler, a schemer, a man perpetually seeking that greener grass. He has big plans and one of his biggest is a cricket stadium in Floyd Bennett Field, an abandoned airport in Brooklyn. He wants to make cricket a huge game in America and he wants to get rich in the process. Chuck's motto is, "Think Fantastic" and that just about sums up the man.
  
  Hans becomes infected and with Chuck, infatuated with the eternally optimistic man who believes, despite Nine-Eleven and it's aftermath, despite it all, that America is still a land of opportunity and endless possibilities. However, sadly for Chuck, he doesn't quite get it that there are those in the country he loves who won't understand or appreciate his dreams, who won't share his optimism, those who think like one potential investor tells him about his grand scheme, that, "there's a limit to what Americans understand. The limit is cricket".
  
  We know right from the start how it all ends up for Chuck Ramikisson, but we read on anyway, because the writing is so fluid, the characters so real and I can certainly attest to how real as life Chuck Ramikisson is. I spent half a decade living in Trinidad and loving every minute of it and while there I met more than a few folks like him, wonderful people all and this is a wonderful book, a story superbly told about people you won't soon forget.
  
  Reviewed by Vesta Irene
  
  

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