| Author: |
|
Joseph O'Neill
|
| Title: |
 |
Netherland |
| Moochable copies: |
|
No copies available |
| Amazon suggests: |
|
| Recommended: |
|
| Topics: |
|
| Published in: |
|
English |
| Binding: |
|
Paperback |
| Pages: |
|
368 |
| Date: |
|
2009-01-05 |
| ISBN: |
|
0007275706 |
| Publisher: |
|
Harper |
| Weight: |
|
0.62 pounds |
| Size: |
|
0.92 x 5.08 x 7.76 inches |
Amazon prices: |
|
|
| Previous givers: |
|
| Previous moochers: |
|
| Wishlists: |
|
| Description: |
|
Product Description
In early 2006, Chuck Ramkissoon is found dead at the bottom of a New York canal. In London, a Dutch banker named Hans van den Broek hears the news, and remembers his unlikely friendship with Chuck and the off-kilter New York in which it flourished: the New York of 9/11, the powercut and the Iraq war. Those years were difficult for Hans - his English wife Rachel left with their son after the attack, as if that event revealed the cracks and silences in their marriage, and he spent two strange years in New York's Chelsea Hotel, passing stranger evenings with the eccentric residents., Lost in a country he'd regarded as his new home, Hans sought comfort in a most alien place - the thriving but almost invisible world of New York cricket, in which immigrants from Asia and the West Indies play a beautiful, mystifying game on the city's most marginal parks. It was during these games that Hans befriends Chuck Ramkissoon, who dreamed of establishing the city's first proper cricket field. Over the course of a summer, Hans grew to share Chuck's dream and Chuck's sense of American possibility - until he began to glimpse the darker meaning of his new friend's activities and ambitions., `Netherland' is a novel of belonging and not belonging, and the uneasy state in between. It is a novel of a marriage foundering and recuperating, and of the shallows and depths of male friendship. With it, Joseph O'Neill has taken the anxieties and uncertainties of our new century and fashioned a work of extraordinary beauty and brilliance.
|
| Reviews: |
|
Keith Shapley (United Kingdom) (2009/06/25):
I was hooked on this after 10 pages. Extremely well written
Marianne (Australia) (2013/09/20):
Netherland is the third novel by Irish-born author, Joseph O’Neill. Set mainly in post 9/11 New York, it is narrated by Hans van den Broek, a Dutch-born equities analyst living the Chelsea Hotel and working in for a large bank. When his English wife, Rachel takes his young son, Jake, and returns to England, Hans fills his empty weekends with the unlikely (in America) pastime of cricket. He makes the acquaintance of the charismatic Chuck Ramkissoon, a Jamaican of Pakistani extraction who has a finger in many pies, including Kosher sushi, real estate, the establishment of an International Cricket Arena, running a betting business and perhaps something darker, all the while with a wife and a mistress. There are lots of interesting and occasionally surprising tidbits in this novel: cricket in New York; cricket in Holland; preparation of cricket pitches; and New York’s non-white immigrant population. The concept of cricket as a civiliser is novel and the comment on America’s seeing (or lack thereof) of the world is perceptive. There is quite a lot of description of New York which is likely to appeal to people who have lived there. But I found the main character frustrating, emotionally deficient and therefore difficult to really like or care about. Even the departure of his wife and son seems insufficient impetus to stir him from his depressive mood and make him feel strongly enough to insist on leaving with her: he settles for no more than visiting every second weekend. When he returns to England, Hans seems to get his wife back by default: “ ‘He’s fucking someone else,’ Rachel said. ‘Good,’ I said, ‘that means I can fuck you.’ ‘OK, she said.’” There is certainly some lovely descriptive prose and imagery: “My family, the spine of my days, had crumbled. I was lost in invertebrate time” and “Huge trees grew nearby, and their leaves intercepted the sunlight very precisely, so that the shadows of their leaves seemed vital and creaturely as they stirred on the ground – an inkling of some supernature, to a sensibility open to such things.” But does this novel live up to the descriptions on the cover: “Mesmerising”, “Dazzling” and “A Brilliant Book” (Barack Obama)? This was an OK read, but nothing earth-shattering.
|
| URL: |
|
http://bookmooch.com/0007275706 |
|
|
