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Netherland (Readers Circle) | 
 enlarge | Author: Joseph O'neill
Publisher: Center Point Large Print
Category: Book
List Price: $32.95
Buy New: $29.86
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Rating:  73 reviews
Sales Rank: 920390
Format: Large Print
Media: Hardcover
Edition: Lrg
Pages: 335
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 5.7 x 1.3
ISBN: 1602853142
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9781602853140
ASIN: 1602853142
Publication Date: October 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
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Product Description
In a New York City made phantasmagorical by the events of 9/11, Hans--a banker originally from the Netherlands--finds himself marooned among the strange occupants of the Chelsea Hotel after his English wife and son return to London. Alone and untethered, feeling lost in the country he had come to regard as home, Hans stumbles upon the vibrant New York subculture of cricket, where he revisits his lost childhood and, thanks to a friendship with a charismatic and charming Trinidadian named Chuck Ramkissoon, begins to reconnect with his life and his adopted country. Ramkissoon, a Gatsby-like figure who is part idealist and part operator, introduces Hans to an “other” New York populated by immigrants and strivers of every race and nationality. Hans is alternately seduced and instructed by Chuck’s particular brand of naivete and chutzpah--by his ability to a hold fast to a sense of American and human possibility in which Hans has come to lose faith.
Netherland gives us both a flawlessly drawn picture of a little-known New York and a story of much larger, and brilliantly achieved ambition: the grand strangeness and fading promise of 21st century America from an outsider’s vantage point, and the complicated relationship between the American dream and the particular dreamers. Most immediately, though, it is the story of one man--of a marriage foundering and recuperating in its mystery and ordinariness, of the shallows and depths of male friendship, of mourning and memory. Joseph O’Neill’s prose, in its conscientiousness and beauty, involves us utterly in the struggle for meaning that governs any single life.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 68 more reviews...
Recollections and reveries of the narrator's four worlds January 6, 2009
Andy Orrock (Dallas, TX)
"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.
 As patchy as a cricket pitch... December 31, 2008
joshua slokum (italy)
This is certainly a good book. The writing is, as James Wood said in his review of it, "exquisite". It has been compared to The Great Gatsby, too, but I only fitfully saw a resemblance there. But I hate to say that it has been over-praised, even though I always want to validate the opinions of James Wood, who is a great critic. The wording is occasionally similar to that of W.G Sebald, as well as Fitzgerald, but it never quite reaches the sublime heights of those two writers. It left me indifferent by the end, which is a shame, because there are many superb moments in this original novel.
 As boring as Cricket December 30, 2008
PB&bananas
I should have put the book down when I read the word cricket. This book will put you to sleep like an 8hour cricket match. There was a lot of uninteresting details that strecthed the book out. The most exciting character in the book was Chuck and if the book was in his perspective it would have been far more interesting. The main character Hans is an oil analyst and seems to have the personality of a tree branch. We go thru the ups and downs of his volatile marriage and magically they make up which I find hard to believe. Any woman who read this book would see why she left him.
 Don't think I can finish it. December 29, 2008
S. Cary (Columbia, MO)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I probably shouldn't write a review of a book I haven't finished, but I agree with everyone else here who has given a negative review. I have a graduate degree in English, so I think I have a little bit of credibility when I say that this is not a good book.
The writing may occasionally be interesting, but most of the time it's not, especially when it's about cricket. The narrator is not likable (unless you are the narrator, he seems to think pretty highly of himself). I keep thinking something might happen that would make it worth reading, but after reading these reviews I don't think so. As someone told me today when I was complaining about this book, "Life is too short to read bad books."
 The book lives up to the hype December 28, 2008
K. H. Grosh (Philadelphia, PA USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a book for people who love language and writing, and equally for people who love knowing the details of things. Even being praised on every end of the year list doesn't ruin the fact that this is just a solidly good book.
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