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Netherland: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Joseph O'neill
Publisher: Pantheon
Category: Book
List Price: $23.95
Buy New: $14.15
You Save: $9.80 (41%)
New (40) Collectible (9) from $14.15
Avg. Customer Rating:  40 reviews
Sales Rank: 722
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
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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 35 more reviews...
 Wow. Wow. Brilliant August 11, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I have not read a book this wonderful in years. The man can write a sentence that can stop you cold. This book will be a classic that people will talk about for years. I never would have believed this book could be as fantastic as all the hype. It is. Only better. Enjoy.
subtle, no need for big gestures, in short: my type of writer August 11, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
For me a big surprise to come across a writer I hadn't read or heard of before, who is so in synchrony with my own way of thinking. No big words, gestures or hollowness, but instead to the point, sharp as a razor and 'my generation' (born in the early sixties). After reading Netherland I got hold of copies of his two other novels, his debut "This is the Life" (1991) and "The Breezes" (1995). O'Neill also did write a marvelous non fiction work of both his grandfathers, one in prison in Ireland and the other in Palestina at some time during the wars there. A must read
 Post 9/11 Mileu...again August 11, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
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.
 Post 9-11 New York illuminated August 7, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Hans Van den Broek, a Dutch native living in New York after 9/11, is estranged from his wife, Rachel and befriends Chuck Ramkissoon, a man from Trinidad who envisions building a cricket emporium in New York that would popularize the game in America and around the world. It's amazing how much of this book deals with cricket, but it also focuses on the multiple worlds of New York City, from the Chelsea Hotel where Hans lives after his family is displaced following 9/11 to Staten Island, where he goes to play cricket to the neighborhoods of Brooklyn, where Chuck lives and operates a numbers game, based on an old one from Trindad called weh weh. Rachel returns to London with their son, Jake, and starts an affair with a famous chef, but Hans returns for visits and attempts to win her back. Chuck's body is found in the Gowanus Canal at the beginning of the book, but we never learn exactly how he died. He was obviously murdered amidst his varied business dealings, which occurs after he befriends Hans and provides him with countless stories about life in a New York that is far from typical. As Hans is incorporated in his world and tries to steady his own, we are illuminated about conditions in NYC in the aftermath of 9/11. Although this is frequently descibed as a 9/11 novel, there is virtually no discussion of 9/11 during the book, except once when Hans says it was a "big deal" to someone in London who downplays it. It's a post-9/11 book since it describes life in the city after it happened and there's an awareness that the world that's described is a result of the tragedy.
Beautiful and Moving August 6, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
"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.
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