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 enlarge | Author: Joseph O'neill
Publisher: Pantheon
Category: Book
List Price: $23.95
Buy New: $14.15
You Save: $9.80 (41%)
New (38) Collectible (9) from $14.15
Avg. Customer Rating:  40 reviews
Sales Rank: 586
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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| Customer Reviews:
 FLYING DUTCHMAN July 29, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
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 emigres (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.
Superb July 28, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
The story of Hans, a Dutch man by origin, who is living in New York where after 9/11 his own life falls apart when his British wife goes back to London, taking their son with her. In his loneliness Hans is driven to cricket, the sport of his childhood in the Netherlands. And he befriends Chuck Ramkissoon, also an immigrant, who plans to build a cricket stadium. Superbly written. This declaration of love for New York City, combined with memories of a Dutch childhood and the struggles of having to rebuild your life made me feel as close to this main character as seldom before.
The Existential New York July 24, 2008
Let me start by saying that this was a hard book to get into. I was a bit bored by the Cricket game and the characters were all quite aloof. However the relationships between the characters were what captivated me. Despite their diversity and their existential behavior, the characters somehow mixed well and wormed along together through a Big Apple that is full of rough spots and loneliness, but also full of a flavor and comraderie found no where else. It wasn't until the last 100 pages that I began to appreciate this and then I couldn't put it down. I love New York City not for its glamour and style, but for its grit, its diversity, and the existentialism of New Yorkers despite the enormity of population. This novel gave to me the New York I love in an elusive insidious way that only an author of great talent is cabable of. Not for all, but worth a shot.
A great read! July 23, 2008
Netherland is a wonderful Novel, and one does not have to know cricket to read it, in fact it may inspire some to find out more about it.
The story is heart wrenching, romantic, and adventurous.
What's funny is as an American who has recently taken up the game of cricket and had the pleasure of actually playing Staten Island Cricket Club, I found the description of Walker Park laugh out loud accurate.
Joseph O'Neill has written a book every man, woman, and cricket player will enjoy.
See Staten Island Criket club, Walker Park, and an overview of cricket On SNY's Street Games
http://www.sny.tv/media/player/mp_tpl.jsp?w=mms%3A//a1503.v222062.c22206.g.vm.akamaistream.net/7/1503/22206/v0001/mlb.download.akamai.com/22206/2007/shows/streetgames/101807_streetgames_cricket_400.wmv&type=v_free&_mp=1
So we beat on, readers against the current. July 22, 2008
My thoughts on Netherland relate to the final page of Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, which seems to be the precedent of O'Neils novel.
(loose qoutation)
'So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past... Until gradually I bacame aware of the old island that flowered for Dutch Sailors' eyes.'
What 'Netherland' boils down to for American readers (New Yorkers in particular), is how willing are we to receive our cultural history from foreign perspectives. For all of those whom made statements post 9/11 like: 'it's our chickens coming home to roost...on', I think we finally can say itabout our literary experience.
In the 20th century, the American Literary greats like Mark Twain, Henry James, Hemmingway, the list goes on... found success in focusing on foreign territoeies. The ugly, or not so ugly American raging through continental Europe served as a means for codifying a comparately vague national identity, defining ourselves as readers and writers from experiences while abroad.
And isn't it literary justice that one of the most overtly 9/11 novels to date levels at New Yorkers through foreign eyes. Year by year, our self-image as the dominant economic, political and artistic voice recedes before us, and never has the idea felt so prescient as when I read 'Netherland'.
While I was willing to concede that 'Netherland' was evocative in how it referenced America from the 'Netherland', its characters grounded in the outerboroughs of NYC- looking distantly at disaster stricken Manhattan Island, the novel was equally dissapointing in how superficially it rendering the landscape.
But what could I possibly have expected? If I once thought Hemmingway an expert on Bull Riding in Spain and Big Game hunting in Africa, maybe the unsatisfied feeling that I had while reading about my hometown during the time that I came of age is a wakeup call... a reason to become more humble, to understand that having an American Passport does not make myself an expert of the world, equally an American Visa is still not yet American as Apple Pie.
I believe and hope that literature continues to be an avenue for deep cultural exchange, and I think foreign writers will continue to sharpen O'Neils "Netherland"... It is a view we should all be willing to consider.
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