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Product Description: 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. Customer Reviews: Rating: 
Date: 2008-07-07
Best novel I have read in manyyears
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. Rating:
Date: 2008-07-05
A Dream of the West
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 is more like Jay Gatsby than a runaway slave. Then there's the men's club of cricket that resonates deeply 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 is nothing easy in those updates: no happy ending to Hans and C. Ramkissoon's relationship; the lost-and-found Eden of The Natural transformed into the civilizing outcome of 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 deeply 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 notes 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 promise of the West than this scene of familial re-unification across generations. Don't get me wrong. O'Neal isn't pandering for Hollywood here; he's sharing the complicated world of his desire and he's 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 consign Netherland to the waste bin of summer reading for very intelligent caucasian-male apologists. I'm still deciding. (That's a good thing.) Rating:
Date: 2008-07-05
Creating the Center That Holds
Much of Netherland is about the game of cricket, and it is a credit to the genius of O'Neill's writing that a reader can approach the book knowing nothing about the game, hear the narrator sigh mid-explanation about how tired he is of trying to explain it to everyone and give up the attempt, and finish reading the novel still not know anything much about cricket, but have enjoyed the whole book anyway. In that way, it reminded me a little of Field of Dreams vis á vis baseball. I can see a film that will satisfy popular interest coming out of Netherland as well, but this is a far more important book in terms of where we are as a society right now than Field of Dreams ever tried to be. In Netherland, for the first time post 9/11 I have read a book about the disaster that exploded in New York and shook every corner of the world, and seen not only what we've lost, but also what we've gained. Rating:
Date: 2008-07-05
The Limit is Cricket
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, Number One fan of Ken Douglas, writer of Tangerine Dream, Desperation Moon and Scorpion. One of the advantages of being married to a writer is that there are always plenty of good books around the house. It's turned me into quite a reader and allowed me to discover many fine books like this one. Rating: 
Date: 2008-07-03
Post 9-11 NYC novel - a great read
Just finished "Netherland" and wanted to jot down a few impressions. One is that I enjoyed reading this novel very much. O'Neill's descriptive powers are awesome and images he creates linger on. The title "Netherland" refers to Holland, where the narrator [and the author] grew up, and also to New York State, which was the former Dutch colony "New Netherland." But "Netherland" also means literally "low land," as in the French term for Belgium and Holland "les pays bas." This is the nadir of Hans van der Broek's life: his lawyer wife has taken his son back to her parents' home in England, fleeing NYC in the wake of the 9-11 attacks. [Her criticisms of the U.S. response to these attacks is severe.] Hans wanders the island of Manhattan, lost in his reveries of his childhood in Holland and his failed marriage, until by chance he's reunited with an old beloved hobby from his youth: the game of cricket. Thus enters the transitional figure Chuck Ramkissoon, who leads Hans through a world so different from his own that Hans is forced to confront himself via memories of childhood, his mother, and his marriage to Rachel and to an ultimate decision to re-take his life. A great read! |
