Netherland: A Novel
by Joseph O'Neill
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Book Reviews of Netherland: A Novel
Book Review: Post 9-11 NYC novel - a great read
Summary: 4 Stars
Just finished "Netherland" and wanted to jot down a few impressions. One is how very enjoyable reading this short novel of personal transformation is. O'Neill's descriptive powers are fresh, and the originality of the scenes and images he creates linger on in memory. The title "Netherland" refers both to Holland, where the narrator [and the author] grew up, and to New York State, which was the former Dutch colony called "New Netherland." But "Netherland" can also mean simply "low land," as in the French term for Belgium and Holland "les pays bas." This is the nadir, the low point of Hans van der Broek's life: his lawyer wife has taken his son back to her parents' home in England, fleeing NYC in the wake of the 9-11 attacks. [Her criticisms of the U.S. response to these attacks will sound harsh to American ears.] Hans wanders the island of Manhattan, lost in reverie, a melancholic Odyssey. He is haunted by bittersweet memories from his childhood in Holland playing cricket or ice-skating, and from his failed marriage, until by chance he's reunited with a beloved sport from his youth: the game of cricket. Thus enters the transitional figure Chuck Ramkissoon, a spiritual yet earthy guide, who leads Hans through a world so different from his own that Hans is forced to confront himself via memories of childhood, his mother, and his marriage to Rachel and to an ultimate decision to re-take and re-shape his life. A great little novel!Book Review: Troubled in NYC (3.25 *s)
Summary: 3 Stars
Set in post-9/11 New York, this novel is principally concerned with an unsettled Hans van den Broek, a native of Holland and a well-known oil investment analyst. His fragile mental state is not helped when his wife Rachel takes their son back to London, using the uneasiness of the times as an excuse.
Far from being a hard-core realist that one would assume about a securities analyst, Hans seems to be in a perpetual state of disconnection, constantly musing about his past or some present-day situation. He fortuitously connects with a group of cricket-playing Caribbeans and Asians, falling under the sway of Chuck Ramkissoon, native of Trinidad and generator of grandiose money-making schemes including the building of a cricket arena on an abandoned airfield. Ordinarily, an upper-middle classer would not associate with immigrants barely scratching out livings, but it seems to be an antidote to Hans' rootlessness.
The book moves rather haltingly as Chuck drags Hans to the "nether" regions of New York to tend to his various flakey ventures, while Hans' ruminations are generously interspersed.
While not a 9/11 book, per se, the general impact is mirrored in Hans' struggles. The net effect of the book is hard to pin down, but he manages to muddle through and returns to London and his family. For the reader, like for Hans, the journey is more important than the end point.
Book Review: Recollections and reveries of the narrator's four worlds
Summary: 4 Stars
"Netherland" is a very good read. Hans van den Broek, Joseph O'Neill's protagonist and narrator is of four worlds: childhood in The Hague; pre-9/11 London; 9/11-era New York City; and post-9/11 London. O'Neill's tale weaves together van den Broek's recollections interrupted by reveries of these four time periods. Hans is reflective, ruminative, self-analyzing, self-critical. The writing bears that level of introspection.
Despite this complexity, you never lose the plot. Nor does the writing ever turn turgid. Much of that is due to the presence of Chuck Ramkissoon, Hans' unlikely boon companion. The unlikely Dutch-Trinidadian combination bond over the sport of cricket and Chuck's entrepreneurial aspirations revolving around it. In Publisher's Weekly review, Chuck is called "a self-mythologizing entrepreneur-gangster." We learn slowly from Hans the narrator of Chuck's gangster side. It's like he's loath to believe it. We are, too, as Chuck seems the most likable sort of fellow. But juxtaposing these warm thoughts is our introduction to Chuck in O'Neill's opening bars: fished from a New York City canal, arms tied behind his back. Somehow, the winsome Chuck collected a vengeful enemy. It takes Hans some time to get there, but in the book's later stages we see - as does Hans, reluctantly - how that might be.
Book Review: netherland
Summary: 3 Stars
This plot of this novel is well summarized by other reviewers, so I will limit myself to only a few comments. The plot itself is rather simple and revolves around three immigrants to New York City. Dutch-born Hans (a securities analyst) and his British wife Rachel (a lawyer) who separate and eventually reunite, 9/11 having disrupted their lives and called into question its meaning. In the midst of this, Hans' best friend and cricket associate Chuck - a Trinidadian immigrant - is found murdered.
There is not much action in this novel... Much of it is devoted to the rather droll and, in my opinion, uninteresting contemplations of Hans, who functions as the voice of the novel. Hans and his wife are rather self-absorbed, depressed people of privilege. Mr. O'Neill does a nice job of juxtaposing them against Chuck - a man of humble origins but with boundless (and, at times, criminal) ambition.
As other reviewers have pointed out, Mr. O'Neill's prose is rather baroque. At times this can be poetic and engaging, but after awhile can become tiresome.
Also, there must be a dozen or so product placements for a major soft drink company's (coca-cola) products in this book. Mr. O'Neill should be ashamed of himself for allowing the artistic value of his work to be diminished in this fashion.
Book Review: A significant work
Summary: 3 Stars
A significant work about an emotionally bleak post-9/11 that is at once invigorating and reflective. The great tragedy of that day is a shadow that falls over the characters and the events, but it wisely never takes over the novel. This is a reasonably suspenseful, well-paced book,even with some rather long-winded explanations of cricket, which I found myself skimming after a while. (O'Neill, is the author of an acclaimed memoir and a member of the Staten Island Cricket Club, and like a reviewer from the Guardian I couldn't help but wonder occasionally if he shouldn't have written a memoir-essay on New York cricket.) The writing is slightly self-aware at times, and some of the undeniably lovely lyric passages don't feel completely credible to the 1st person narrator. Still, many of the psychological aspects are piercingly sharp and the writing is both honest and subtle, although the main character, Hans, is ultimately less interesting, and more thinly-drawn than the novel's foil, Chuck, a Trinidadian self-made (and highly shady) business man who, we learn early on, has been murdered. Quibbles aside, O'Neill is a great observer of the human condition, and his descriptions of the occupants of the Chelsea Hotel alone are worth the effort.