Netherland (Vintage Contemporaries)
by Joseph O'Neill
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Book Summary Information
Author: Joseph O'NeillEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-05-07
ISBN: 0307388778
Number of pages: 256
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of Netherland (Vintage Contemporaries)
Book Review: A 21st Century Gatsby?
Summary: 4 Stars
Is it another Gatsby? This question has been asked before of various novels. Is Netherland a 21st century Gatsby? This question is what drew me to Joseph O'Neill's novel and is what remained with me throughout my reading of this intriguing and compelling story of an unusual friendship between two men, the narrator, a reasonable and responsible Dutchman living in New York before and after a break-up with his wife, and his unforgettable acquaintance, the enigmatic Chuck Ramkissoon. By creating a novel focused on friendship between a conservative Dutch narrator and his flamboyant and inscrutable Trinidadian acquantaince, O'Neill taps into the dynamic between Nick, the conservative narrator, and Gatsby, the romantic bootlegger, of The Great Gatsby. This parallel kept me thoroughly intrigued, because the friendship in Netherland is further complicated because both men are immigrants to New York City after 9/11 and both are pursuing the American way or the American dream. (Nick and Gatsby, both from the West, came to New York to make it big; these characters, too, are from elsewhere and come to New York to make it big.) But even more important than the interesting friendship between the men or even the many evocative descriptions of the game of cricket, O'Neill in Netherland creates a social and physical landscape of New York that is just as evocative as was Fitzgerald's New York in the 1920s. Like Fitzgerald in Gatsby, O'Neill in Netherland evokes the original New York of the first Dutch and the current New York. For Fitzgerald, it was the New York of the Jazz Age; for O'Neill, it's the New York of the 21st century, a New York that is a wonderfully and thoroughly multiethnic and multicultural mix of people and cultures. Finally, the Dutchman narrator, like Nick Carraway, is both astute and naive about his friend and about New York, and we as the readers find his discoveries along the way to be at the heart and the center of this Gatsby-like novel.
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