Netherland: A Novel
by Joseph O'Neill
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Book Reviews of Netherland: A Novel
Book Review: The ending left a lot to be desired
Summary: 3 Stars
In Joseph O'Neill's Netherland, Hans van der Broek is a Dutch-born/English resident who follows Rachael, his lawyer-wife to New York for a two-year stay. There he has no trouble landing a job as an oil banker/analyst.
The novel opens with the van der Broeks' departure and by page five, they are back in England, trying to make sense of some sad news. It seems that a reporter for the New York Times has called them to get some information on Hans' Trinidadian friend and mentor, Chuck Ramkisson, whose handcuffed "remains" have been found. Foul play is suspected.
From that revelation, the novel borders on a touch of mystery as it weaves back and forth (where O'Neill shows off his skill as a writer) between Hans' stay in America and his current life in England. But that thread of plot line is extremely limited.
Not long after the van der Broeks' settle into Manhattan, 9/11 occurs. They are forced to move into the Chelsea Hotel where their martial problems mount. Soon Rachel takes their son and returns to Britain to live with her parents.
Left behind, Hans stumbles his way onto a cricket field and meets Chuck. It seems there is an entire subculture of immigrant cricket players all over the peninsula. Chuck's dream is to reclaim cricket as America's original sport and remove its immigrant-stereotype shroud.
Speaking of stereotypes, O'Neill does a fabulous job in placing his novel nowhere near the typical New York scene. I saw a New York that I had never seen before. I also know more about cricket and what it takes to have the perfect playing field than I ever wanted to know.
The long, winding, and often rambling sentence structure functions as the gateway to the novels themes of disconnectedness and disenfranchisement. Still, the only thing that kept me reading was to know more about how Chuck ended up face down in a drainage ditch.
To say I was disappointed in the ending is an understatement. It was flat, and when I turned the final page, I was surprised to learn the story was over. No big aha moment, no epiphany, just a guy moseying through life.
Armchair Interviews says: Heed this reviewer's comments.
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: Best novel I have read in manyyears
Summary: 5 Stars
I loved this book. I lack the patience to read many novels but the greatness of the writing in this book overwhelmed my frustration with fiction, much of which is either too simplistic or too self-conscious.
I didn't see this book, as others have, as a "9/11 in NYC" book. Not even close. It can be read on one level as simply the narrative of a man's thoughts about two important relationships in his life and no more, and in that basic frame, it is gorgeously written, and soars at the end (which to me contrasted favorably with Oscar Wao, the one other excellent novel I read this year, which felt anticlimatic at the end, as if the author had to force an ending because the book had reached a certain point where there was nowhere better to go). In this context, New York City is just a place where most of it happens and the 9/11 references are almost obligatory and the book would have seemed strained had it not made some.
Then, of course there is the level at which it is a meditation on the idea of America in a post-9/11 world and the ironic retelling of the Gatsby story in the form of a hustler from Trinidad, and the analogue between the reconciliation between spouses with different attitudes toward the US and the need for America to reconcile with its best self were imaginative and deeply satisfying approaches to the question of the American identity in the 21st century. In this frame, the 9/11 references are of course there but the issues raised are not "9/11 in NYC" issues as much as they are "Iraq" and "Bush / Cheney Scalia destroying civil liberties" issues which are broad American issues put in play by what happened on 9/11. Such that "9/11" is more like the plot developments in a Chekhov play, or the Macguffin in a Hitchcock movie, than the focal point of the book.
I thought the other reviews of this book were extraordinarily incisive and far better than what one usually sees in this website. I think that in itself testifies implicitly to the excellence of the book. As to whether this book will stand the test of time, who knows, but it is the best novel I have read in several years.
Book Review: Intoxicating
Summary: 4 Stars
"The Adversity of Hans van den Broek, as such a tale might be called, amounts to not very much." Thus the narrator of this unusually acute and well-written novel describes his own misery during a two-year stay in NYC. The misery was triggered indirectly by 9/11 and directly by the departure of van den Broek's acerbic wife and little son Jake. The marriage at the heart of this tale is hardly charged with warmth. In fact, both Hans and Rachel, his wife, are cool customers, fancying themselves as intellectuals and superior beings. Hans, however, is brought down to earth in a hurry, and winds up in residence at the Chelsea Hotel, under whose roof a collection of eccentrics resides that provide him with odd yet comforting company. These characters are well described and are fascinating.
The true heart of this work, however, beats in Chuck Ramkissoon, the Trinidadian cricket maven, raconteur, shady character, womanizer, gangster, and roving genius with whom Hans takes up during his forced hiatus. Chuck's dream is to bring cricket center stage in America and to bankroll a major stadium for the sport at Floyd Bennet Field in Brooklyn. At the very outset of this novel, we know that Chuck's body has been found in the Gowanus Canal, hands cuffed behind his back. Yet this information does not detract one bit from the tale, and in fact, brings out Chuck's life even more.
The narrative is hypnotic in parts because of Chuck's long and fascinating rants, and the book is hard to put down. I was repulsed at times, however, by Hans's sometimes blatant narcissism and self-absorption. In fact, van den Broek's personal melodrama "amounts to not very much," but it's couched within a fresh eye's view of my city, New York, and all its familiar places, including the outer boroughs of Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island.
I recommend this work, but O'Neill puts his vocabulary on display a number of times, which might send you off to the dictionary if you are a conscientious reader. One might say this is a bit of overwriting, but this is a minor quibble with a very good piece of work.
Book Review: An extraordinary achievement
Summary: 5 Stars
O'Neill's novel is just marvelous. A poignant, funny and heart-wrenching account of events that unfold as a result of the 9/11 destruction of the World Trade Center. The fear, vulnerability and the sense of isolation that the attack exposes are palpable in passages of beautifully written prose. I found myself constantly pausing after paragraphs to reread and savor the author's descriptions.
The New York he describes is as authentic as any I have encountered in a novel: dreaded trips to the DMV are as dreadful as can be--creepy "performance artists" at the Time Square subway station are even more oppressive than the suffocating maze undergoing renovation. These "netherlands" and New York's Hudson Valley the original New Netherlands are juxtaposed to the mile high skyscrapers and Tribeca lofts that domicile the newest colonists.
Under the observant eye of Hans, a commodties analyst from the original Netherlands and his unlikely but entirely believable Trinidadian companion, Chuck, O'Neill explores the terrifying possibility of being alone in a city of eight million people. Loosely structured around their relationship to the game of cricket, Hans sets out to find something that will re-anchor and replace the sense of permanence he has lost.
I will never again hear the upstate town of Poughkeepsie pronounced without recalling the author's description as merry childish blurting. I probably will never go on Google Earth without experiencing something of the futility Hans feels as he "travels" to England each night to try to be near to the son who has gone home with Hans's wife. The technology, like his emotions will only let him get so close to family he aches for.
The entire book is what fiction does best: it is new and familiar at the same time. These characters are strangers and different yet just the same as yourself. Some reviewers have made a comparison Fitzgeralds's Gatsby which is apt. But for me, Joseph O'Neill's Netherland conjured up EM Forster's admonition in Howard's End: "Just connect....connect!".