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Netherland: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Joseph O'neill
Publisher: Pantheon
Category: Book
List Price: $23.95
Buy New: $14.25
You Save: $9.70 (41%)
New (38) Collectible (6) from $14.25
Avg. Customer Rating:  21 reviews
Sales Rank: 173
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: brand new, never opened
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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 16 more reviews...
Post 9-11 NYC novel - a great read July 3, 2008
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!
A heavy but charming examination of exile, friendship, and New York City June 30, 2008
Hans van den Broek is a man adrift. Recently separated from his wife Rachel, who has returned to her native England with the couple's young son, Hans is in his mid-30s and still living out of a suitcase in the Chelsea Hotel in 2003, a temporary situation that seems to have become permanent after Hans and Rachel fled their Tribeca loft in the wake of September 11, 2001.
Left behind by his family in a city that is not his home, Hans, a native Dutchman who has grown fabulously wealthy as an oil futures analyst in Manhattan, is still flummoxed by his quasi-adopted country and its inhabitants. And even as he attempts to make sense of everything from turns of phrase to the particularly aggressive style of the American walk signal at traffic lights, Hans tries to make sense of himself.
An analyst by trade, Hans is also an analyst by nature, noticing small details in the people and places he encounters, and devoting not insignificant efforts on analyzing himself, particularly the remoteness he feels not only from his family but also from his youthful self, one who had meaningful relationships, found joy in life and excelled at the sport of cricket.
So when Hans connects with an energetic, charismatic Trinidadian immigrant named Chuck Ramkissoon, his subsequent discoveries reconnect Hans not only with a little-known subculture of New York but also to his youthful past. Through Chuck, and with his involvement in the New York Cricket Club, Hans encounters immigrants from virtually every English-speaking country in the world as they meet for games on makeshift cricket fields carved out of every spare corner of the five boroughs and beyond. Hans's reunion with his beloved sport brings him back to his past, to his origins and possibly to himself.
NETHERLAND is Joseph O'Neill's third novel. A native of Ireland who has lived in the Netherlands for many years, O'Neill certainly understands the feeling of estrangement from one's own country as well as the feeling of being an alien in one's adopted homeland. The symbolism of exile is apparent throughout this elegiac, thoughtfully-paced novel --- not only in the shape of cricket but also in images of migratory birds, shifting ice floes, and the constantly moving and shifting population of New York City.
The city itself is practically a character in the novel, described alternately by Hans, the narrator, with grudging admiration, genuine fondness and a sense of loss as he prepares to leave the city forever. As the city moves through the seasons during the winter and spring of 2003 and beyond, the narrative alights on tiny moments --- a degrading incident at the DMV, a surprise sprout from a long-forgotten flower bulb, the reawakening of the city's homeless population --- that not only point to a profoundly observant understanding of the city but also mirror Hans's shifting consciousness.
Although NETHERLAND, with its meticulous details, heavy self-reflection and at times ponderous pace, may not be a novel for everyone, it will speak strongly to those who value carefully crafted sentences, wise observations and moments of startling insight.
--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl
Beautiful but understated, rather like cricket June 29, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Hans van den Broek is a pleasant chap: observant, often witty, cricket-loving, and kind to the strangest of strangers. This characterization of the narrator, along with some beautiful and perceptive prose, is what gives Netherland its special appeal, for this is a retrospective novel of sparse drama and little suspense. Another attraction is the unusual milieu: the New York cricket scene, and its largely South Asian and West Indian membership. A second milieu, the famously offbeat Chelsea Hotel, is a tad predictable as an urban microcosm (as is the amiable eccentricity of its inhabitants) but O'Neill refreshes the device with gentle humor. Passages set in Holland and London add further cosmopolitanism, quite fitting to this story of global migrants.
Chuck Ramkissoon, Hans's driven and ethically suspect friend, is a Trinidadian Gatsby for our times, a self-centered dreamer with a shady fortune who still inspires affection and loyalty. And there's much of Nick Carraway about Hans: a level-headed outsider both drawn to and wary of his exotic friend, a capable man who makes a decent living in the city but opts to follow his heart and leave. Where Netherland differs most from Gatsby is in its embrace of New York. This is a "post-9/11 novel," or so Michiko Kakutani described it in the New York Times. While there's some discussion of the malaise that followed the attacks - the strain threatens to scupper Hans' marriage to Rachel (a smart but shrill Brit) - O'Neill is more interested in celebrating New York's endless power to create possibility for new generations of immigrants. NYC is a vortex of enthusiasm, and though Hans is rather unhappy there, he warms to its energizing, regenerating effect on others.
Without overdoing it, O'Neill peppers his tale with arresting imagery. The Staten Island cricket field where Hans plays is surrounded by houses with elaborate gardens. "For as long as anyone can remember, the local residents have tolerated the occasional crash of a cricket ball, arriving like a gigantic meteoritic cranberry, into their flowering shrubbery." O'Neill does a fine job of explaining cricket to the American majority without boring the initiated.
The story has a meandering structure, switching back and forth in time, a fractured chronology that encourages connections and contrasts. But it's overdone. It's self-consciously literary. The main effect is to de-emphasize drama and keep the focus on observation, yet O'Neill could have struck a better balance between action and thought. We have the makings of a much more emotionally compelling story - What will happen to Chuck and his dream of a first-class Brooklyn cricket ground? What will happen to Hans and Rachel's marriage? - but these outcomes are revealed within the first two pages. Rather like a five-day game of cricket between teams unafraid of a draw, the novel is an exercise in understatement, eliciting only moderate emotional investment, mildly pleasurable with occasional flashes of brilliance.
Since critics (NYT, New Yorker) consider Netherland exemplary, it seems to me that Tom Wolfe's complaint of 20 years ago is still valid: modern fiction remains too concerned with literary effect and intellectual contemplation and too little interested in enthralling stories. I'm not arguing for gratuitous pushing of readers' buttons, or for catharsis, but for the kind of alternately unsettling and inspiring storytelling that Wolfe advocated when he called for a return to the spirit of Dickens. The "post-9/11 novel" surely deserves as much.
 Breathtaking and Brilliant June 24, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
'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'.
Hans and Rachel June 22, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Rachel, a lawyer, is unhappy in her marriage with Hans, an analyst at an investment bank. And so, the couple separates, with Rachel returning to London with Jake, their young son. While Hans visits his wife and son twice monthly, he spends most of his time alone in New York. He is depressed. He has no real friends.
In this life of isolation, Hans makes a serendipitous connection to the cricket community in New York, where he meets Chuck R., a naturalized citizen from the Caribbean. In this shabby new world of immigrant cricketers, Hans slowly develops a sense of community, where his new peers are the Pakistani guy who works at a gas station or the Hindu who drives a cab. Meanwhile, Chuck presents to Hans an image of entrepreneurial striving, which has qualities that are both inspiring and sleazy. Slowly, the world that grows from this cricket connection begins to exert its power on Hans. Then, he has a moment-of-truth and decides to return to London, resolving to win back his family.
In telling this story, O'Neill offers patches of writing that are wonderfully poetic. Perhaps, the best examples were presented in THE NEW YORKER review of NETHERLAND, which was written by the overpraising James Wood (How Fiction Works). At the same time, O'Neill is far from a flawless writer. He can, for example, be melodramatic:
"A hooting sob rose up from my chest. I began to gulp and pant. A deep and useless shame filled me--shame that I had failed my wife and son, shame that I lacked the means to fight on, to tell her that I refused to accept that our marriage had suddenly collapsed..."
And his prose occasionally verges on clunky.
"Rain spotted my window as we pulled away into the tunnels and gorges through which the Penn Station trains secretively dribble up the West Side."
Readers that find the greatest pleasure in NETHERLAND will be those interested in the marriage of Hans and Ruth. Those looking for a book about 9/11 will be disappointed, since the problems in this marriage preceded 9/11 and evolved without real connection to this horrible event. This, in fact, is something that O'Neill himself wryly acknowledges, with Hans identifying early in this novel the level where NETHERLAND truly operates. "All lives, I remember thinking, eventually funnel into the advice columns of women's magazines."
One final point: There are minor mistakes in this book that drove me crazy. Hans, for example, wouldn't work in a cubicle. (He's the fourth rated analyst in his specialty, according to INSTITUTIONAL INVESTORS. This means his recommendations bring in big bucks and he gets an office.) Hans and Rachel taxi to Riverdale from the West Side using Broadway? Nope, they'd use the Henry Hudson. An investment banker and lawyer move into the Chelsea Hotel with their wee child after 9/11? NO WAY! (Go to Wikipedia and you'll see what I mean. This is not the place Yuppies go to recover from trauma.) And in Central Park, you'll never find Sheep's Meadow. But the Sheep Meadow is near Tavern on the Green.
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