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Netherland: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Joseph O'neill
Publisher: Pantheon
Category: Book
List Price: $23.95
Buy New: $11.00
You Save: $12.95 (54%)
New (49) Used (22) Collectible (8) from $8.49
Avg. Customer Rating:  52 reviews
Sales Rank: 1059
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6 x 1.2
ISBN: 0307377040
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780307377043
ASIN: 0307377040
Publication Date: May 20, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: dust jacket edges slightly shelfworn
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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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 47 more reviews...
A document of our time October 7, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
When this book was published in the spring of 2008, it received wonderful reviews, most notably in May on the front page of the New York Times Sunday Book Review Magazine. The usually difficult and persnickety Michiko Kakutani also gave it high marks in another review in the Times' daily edition. It was therefore a surprise when the book was ignored by the Booker Prize, not even making the long list for the prestigious award in England.
This is a complex novel, moving along the timeline between a few weeks after September 11, 2001 and three years later, when the upheaval created by the terrorist attack starts to become a healing memory with persistent repercussions. Details of life and the mindset in New York and of the U.S. at large are nicely detailed, but the most compelling narrative is the way the terrorist attack disrupts and almost anihilates the marriage of the protagonist.
Interwoven with the marriage break-up is the main character's pursuit of the game of cricket in New York, and his involvement with a shady character who wants to popularize the game in the U.S. What's the connection between the two story lines? The main character is Dutch, reared in England, and finds in cricket a civility and a comfort that has been denied him since the departure of his wife back to her native England after September 11.
Joseph O'Neill is wonderful writer. His prose is sure-footed even as it jumps from future to present to past, never confusing the reader, and always with near-poetic language that is beautiful as well as evocative of the action on the page. Let's hope the National Book Awards later this year (2008) recognize this tremendous achievement.
 Enormously Disappointing October 5, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
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.
 Uneven and frustrating September 25, 2008
"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.
The Only Review You Need September 16, 2008
2 out of 23 found this review helpful
Ok, first off I didn't read this book. Nor do I know who the author is or what it's about. But look at the cover. It's soooo stupid. I mean, come on, what's the stupid kid in the front doing? Is he even in the book? And why is it just a little picture with all that white around? I hate when they do that. When I draw I never leave a bunch of empty space unless it's supposed to be snow. I hope it doesn't snow as much as it did last year. My car is terrible in the snow. In conclusion, this book leaves something to be desired.
Love,
Ted
Authentic expat experience September 15, 2008
The story begins with the protagonist, Hans van den Broek who is a Holland native living in London with his wife and son, reminiscing about his time spent living for a few years in New York and wondering whatever happened to a West Indian friend he made there named Chuck Ramkissoon. Such details go a long way to explain how cricket can produce such cultural fusion when it becomes part of the expatriate experience, taking comfort in something old and familiar and treasuring it when thrown into a whole new world.
The novel deals a lot with the awkwardness of life after 9/11 and feeling out of place in the world, not knowing how to proceed with day-to-day activities after a life-changing event. The story can be hard to follow at times as it unfolds in a unique anachronistic style that more closely resembles stream of consciousness as opposed to flashbacks or reflections. But one of the book's biggest strengths, and what makes it feel authentic, lies in the attention to detail and experiences that could only be known by an expat, and especially one who plays cricket.
There are other little anecdotes too, like the great northeast summer blackout of 2003 and the Thanksgiving Day parade balloon characters that blew out of control in the wind that same year. They make the reader get involved and relate to how Hans experienced these events. People from the New York metro area will appreciate moments like these more than others, which is absolutely fine because it adds more character to the story.
But I suppose the best and most vivid element of the book is Hans' relations with the people around him, especially immigrants. Hans is the only white player in any of the matches he ever plays in. Writing this review as a white American cricketer, this is very believable. There has been one time in three years where an opponent had a white player in their team, an Australian at a match in Kansas. Hans meets Chuck, a black Trinidadian who at the time is an umpire. In part through Chuck's knowledge of the local communities, Hans comes across people from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, the West Indies, and Sri Lanka. Most of Hans' fellow players have low paying jobs and live in poor run down areas of Brooklyn and the other boroughs. It generally isn't possible to find Australian or English or Kiwi expats playing cricket in the US, because more often than not, these people are white and they fit in seamlessly with the rest of mainstream America. It is a different story for almost all non-white immigrants. They have to stick together if they want to survive and one of the ways to do that is building around a sport, in this case with cricket. Hans is all alone though. His family has left him and his job just is. He tries to fit in with America by joining a fantasy football pool with the night staff at the Chelsea Hotel, his current residence, but it is beyond him. So he crosses over the cultural divide of America to get back into something he knows, the culture of cricket.
Netherland has the requisite twists and turns of any good plot to keep readers on their toes. O'Neill also has a creative, 21st century approach to writing about relationships and love. It definitely makes the book original. However, what makes it worth reading is its authenticity, something that is as hard to accomplish as keeping the ball on the ground when playing cricket in America.
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