Netherland: A Novel by Joseph O'Neill Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Netherland: A Novel
Book Review: Calamitous events often cause us to reassess our lives
Summary: 5 Stars
Netherland could have easily been written after any major catastrope. The point of the book is that after a horrific event such as 9/11, people are often moved to reevaluate their lives in the context of what is important and what is trivial. This reassessment if often colored by ones background and upbringing and can highlight incompatibilities between husbands and wives. Hans is a tall, quiet, intelligent, upwardly mobile Dutchman, married to Rachel, an Englishwomen and a high powered, eloquent lawyer. Rachel is a "doer". She is emotional and very vocal about her feelings. She is, for Hans, a "human flashlight" whereas Hans "naturally associates loves with a house fallen into silence" - a result of his Dutch upbringing in a single parent home.
In the midst of this tension between Rachel and Hans is Chuck Ramkisoon, a Trinidadian and a naturalized American citizen who is essentially Hans' only (and unlikely) friend in New York - essentially Hans' lifeline after Rachel leaves Hans and moves back to London after 9/11. Chuck is easily the most interesting character in the book. He is typical of the immigrant who comes to the U.S. in search of the American Dream - an intelligent, self taught man who questions Hans about his business in the same way as a professional fund manager. He umpires cricket games, has a kosher sushi restaurant with a Jewish partner and runs a wei wei ring -illegal gambling. He's a petty crook with big dreams and big ideas about starting a cricket club in new York that will solve the world's ills. He has a wife and a mistress. He has businesses both legal and illegal. He's a messy guy with a messy life but as his partner says, he has enough life in him for ten people.
Without giving away the entire story, I believe the author's point is that while we are all, of course, a product of our environment and upbringing, the one thing we ultimately all seek is love and human connections.
One word of caution for people who have read the "one star" comments. Yes, there are come sentances that may come off as convoluted. That said, these are few and far between. Overall, this is a well written book that deserves it's cricital acclaim.
Book Review: Creating the Center That Holds
Summary: 5 Stars
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.Book Review: Cricket in America
Summary: 4 Stars
As someone who plays cricket in America, manages a team and even built a pitch on a public park, I was able to in fact relate very much to the main character in the book, although I certainly don't want to end up dead like him for his efforts! Not giving anything away here, the book begins with the murder and builds suspense while winding its way through politics, romance etc...which could be exasperating...enough smut, mon, lets play ball ;-)
Seriously, to us expats in America from cricket loving countries, this book gives a voice. Everything in our lives, seems, has an analogy in the game, but somehow all of that gets buried by the culture of our adopted home. Soon life feels very pseudo, only to be saved when we indulge in the game.
But say what you will about cricket being somewhat underground activity in America and great "back home" wherever it may be, I think it is truly a lot more fun playing here...we get a unique perspective of the world that even the top international cricketers don't get...perhaps for a season or two, when they are at the top of their game, playing away from home, if that. As for pitches, most of us cannot relate to authors lament about "bush cricket" at all...we used to play in sand-pits in India and beaches in the Caribbean...bottom line...for many of us, this is a move up!
I know this is fiction, but I found one episode to be completely unbelievable. The author goes to India, the modern home of the game, and instead of cricket gets wrapped up in some spiritual mumbo jumbo. Whatever...
Book Review: Cricket in Purgatory
Summary: 5 Stars
The book jacket of the hard-bound edition is entrancingly deceptive. Printed on what feels like watercolor paper, it shows a colored vignette of men in white playing cricket on a village green watched by spectators relaxing in the shade of a spreading chestnut tree. It could well be the nineteenth century, except that the skyline in the background is Manhattan, and Joseph O'Neill's novel is set in the first years of the present century. Written in a style of such lucidity that it might almost be an autobiographical memoir, it is the narrative of three years or so in New York City. The protagonist Hans van den Broek, a Dutch-born financial analyst, thirtyish and near the top of his profession, arrives there at the start of the millennium with Rachel, his English wife, herself a high-powered lawyer. But after the attacks of 9/11, Rachel returns to England with their infant son. Hans stays on.
On one level, this is a novel of displacement. Having already relocated to London from Holland, Hans makes the further move to New York, where both he and Rachel prosper. But they have to evacuate their loft apartment after the attacks, and move into temporary quarters in the Chelsea Hotel, which is portrayed as an almost-surreal world unto itself. So Hans is essentially rootless before the story truly starts. By sheer chance, he stumbles upon the fact that cricket is played in New York by scratch teams of immigrants from former British colonies: Indians, Pakistanis, Caribbeans. Hans, who learned the game at an exclusive school in Holland, becomes the only white member of a team formed of taxi-drivers, store-keepers, and small businessmen, who offer him a kind of camaraderie that he cannot find among his professional colleagues.
Although cricket is an important symbolic presence, it plays a relatively minor part in the action, and it is not necessary for the reader to know the game. At first, cricket is presented as a symbol of the immigrant subculture, the thing that both brings people together and emphasizes their differences from mainstream America. As a successful Wall Street banker, Hans might be expected to fit right into New York society -- and indeed the author makes the point that, as a Dutchman, he is actually a member of the historic first tribe of New York. But in soul-crushing scenes at the DMV and INS that might have been penned by Kafka, but which any victim of American bureaucracy will recognize, O'Neill does not spare Hans some of the worst aspects of the immigrant experience. Hans spends the first part of the book in a cultural limbo; when he joins the team, he find that most of his old skills come back, but he cannot bring himself to modify his patrician batting form in order to hold his own with players who learned in dirt lots; by his final American cricket game, he is hitting out with reckless abandon.
The English have an expression, "It's not cricket," when something contravenes an unstated social law. Later in the book, Hans remarks: "I cannot be the first to wonder if what we see, when we see men in white take to a cricket field, is men imagining an environment of justice." That "imagining" is important; O'Neill gently suggests that America's image as the champion of justice has become tarnished in the last few years. But he is also framing the moral dichotomy of the novel. The other major character in the story is a Trinidadian immigrant, Chuck Ramkissoon, a Gatsby-like figure who thinks big and maintains a finger in every pie. At the very beginning of the book (which is all told in flashbacks), Hans learns of Chuck's death in what seems like a mob killing. But his first chronological appearance in the story is when, as the umpire for a cricket match, he defuses a potentially dangerous situation, and follows it up with a clubhouse speech that is both a defence of the highest ideals of cricket and a potential vision of America as the Promised Land. Chuck has grandiose plans to build an international cricket stadium in New York, and he enlists Hans into furthering his vision. But he also has shady activities on the side, whose nature only gradually becomes clear. In dealing with these two sides of Chuck's character, Hans gradually comes to re-examine his own moral sense, identity, and priorities.
But NETHERLAND is no mere novel of ideas; it is also an emotionally wrenching love-story. For most of the book, the marriage of Hans and Rachel is virtually non-existent. When she leaves him, it is clear that she needs to escape more than the physical dangers of the bombed city. Hans flies to London every two weeks to see his son, but his relations with Rachel are painfully distant. And yet the novel opens some years later, with the two of them back together again, and apparently happy. Amazingly, O'Neill makes the fact that "you know how it all comes out" into a source of more tension, not less. The days in New York between Rachel's decision and her actual departure are agonizing and so so true. And even when Hans leaves America and returns to London for good, the story is far from over; there is love to be found, but it must be new-forged, and it does not come easily. At one point towards the end of his stay in America (in Las Vegas, no less), Hans talks of reaching absolute bottom. But it is not Hell that he has been through, rather a very special kind of Purgatory.
The author Sebastian Barry, in a comment quoted on the back cover, writes: "The dominant sense is of aftermath, things flying off under the impulse of an unwanted explosion, and the human voice calling everything back." Without that human voice, this story might merely be an offbeat curiosity. But O'Neill, with his clear moral compass and extraordinary power of writing from the heart, has created what may be the most moving book I have read all year.
Book Review: Don't get the hype
Summary: 2 Stars
Was anticipating a great read - and it was merely okay. Being married to a cricket-loving Brit, I am very familiar with the game, and was hoping that would add to the story. I didn't find that to be the case. I felt as if I was waiting for something to happen all the way through the book, and it just didn't get there. (I also really wanted to love this book so I could recommend it to my man - and others...but sorry, no recommendations here.)
I, too, was hoping for something more out of the 'post 9/11' advertising - and other than some references to that occasion and the impact, I don't think that set-up added to the book either.
I had a hard time finishing this book - it just didn't grab me. I think there are many great reads out there - I just didn't find this to be one of them.
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