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 enlarge | Author: Joseph O'neill
Publisher: Pantheon
Category: Book
List Price: $23.95
Buy New: $14.26
You Save: $9.69 (40%)
New (39) Used (12) Collectible (11) from $14.26
Rating:  58 reviews
Sales Rank: 2365
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 272
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6 x 1.2
ISBN: 0307377040
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780307377043
ASIN: 0307377040
Publication Date: May 20, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 6-10 of 58
So beautifully written October 14, 2008
S. K. GILBERT
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I enjoyed this book for the novelty of its subject: a post 9/11 story told against the background of a troubled marriage and the prinicpal character's love for the game of cricket.The characters are well drawn and the story is intriguing.
A document of our time October 7, 2008
Jose Sotolongo (Kingston, NY United States)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
When this book was published in the spring of 2008, it received wonderful reviews, most notably in May on the front page of the New York Times Sunday Book Review Magazine. The usually difficult and persnickety Michiko Kakutani also gave it high marks in another review in the Times' daily edition. It was therefore a surprise when the book was ignored by the Booker Prize, not even making the long list for the prestigious award in England.
This is a complex novel, moving along the timeline between a few weeks after September 11, 2001 and three years later, when the upheaval created by the terrorist attack starts to become a healing memory with persistent repercussions. Details of life and the mindset in New York and of the U.S. at large are nicely detailed, but the most compelling narrative is the way the terrorist attack disrupts and almost anihilates the marriage of the protagonist.
Interwoven with the marriage break-up is the main character's pursuit of the game of cricket in New York, and his involvement with a shady character who wants to popularize the game in the U.S. What's the connection between the two story lines? The main character is Dutch, reared in England, and finds in cricket a civility and a comfort that has been denied him since the departure of his wife back to her native England after September 11.
Joseph O'Neill is wonderful writer. His prose is sure-footed even as it jumps from future to present to past, never confusing the reader, and always with near-poetic language that is beautiful as well as evocative of the action on the page. Let's hope the National Book Awards later this year (2008) recognize this tremendous achievement.
 Enormously Disappointing October 5, 2008
BookJunky (Oyster Bay, NY)
6 out of 8 found this review helpful
That I am even writing this is evidence of my dislike. I have a million things to do, and yet, out of sheer disgust and disappointment, I must critique this work. That this earned the reviews it did, has made me more intrepid about reviving my own writing career. If this author, whose name I will never remember, since the work itself is immemorable, can write and get the reviews he did, so can I. So can You. So can my dog.
If there were beautiful sentences, I missed them! You want beautiful sentences, read Fitzgerald, to whom this author, shockingly, erroneously, has been compared. Read Roth's Everyman, Llosa's The Bad Girl, Petterson's Out Stealing Horses. You want a substitute for Ambien, read this novel.
My problem with this book is that I didn't care about the characters. Had I not recommended it for my book group, I wouldn't have finished it. (Having finished it, I can say I wouldn't have missed much!) Around page 175 I felt a twinge for the protagonist, Hans, the stirrings of feeling, but this didn't evolve into anything more significant. The female character was flat and unbelievable, which made Han's affection for her unbelievable. The Chuck character was uneven. He was like a sketch of a character. I felt as though the author didn't really know him. When, finally, something happens to him I thought, who cares? (Who's Chuck?)
The narrator spends a lot of time telling about the events in his life. but he is a royal bore, thus, so were his exegeses. I would launch into one of these paragraphs, and, midway through, substitute blah, blah, blah.
In my opinion, the author undertook a literary task that proved out of his league. He developed a depressed and disassociated first person narrator undergoing life altering experiences. Unlike say, Salinger or Roth or Petteron or Charles Baxter, he failed to make this narrator evoke feelings in the reader. There was a lot of telling in this book. I often had the impression the author himself wasn't intimate with his characters. I never got there.
Based on the reviews I read everywhere I recommended this dull mass of words to my book group and I am embarrassed. I plan to fill the time talking about all the other good books I recently read.
 Uneven and frustrating September 25, 2008
Matthew J. Lambert (River Forest, IL USA)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
"Netherland" is a book that received very positive reviews from major newspapers as well as this web site. It always is a cause for reflection when one's opinion runs contrary to "experts" but I believe this book fails to live up to a five star rating.
I feel the writing is uneven, mannered and more focused on the technical elements of the fiction rather than its substance. The narrator can be an annoying and petulant presence and when he bemoans the number of friends and acquaintances (not to mention his wife) who leave him or fail to maintain contact, it is not hard to understand why.
There were times when I wondered whether I wanted to finish it but abandoning a book in mid-read has been a rare occurrence for me. There was a redemption, of sorts, in the final chapter (the book is divided into three chapters.) The author began to write in a freer and more relaxed fashion and with greater emotion. It actually felt like someone else had picked up the pen or, at the least, the author had decided to get to the heart of the matter.
There may be a time when I am willing to give this book a second read but,overall, I see it only as a partially successful effort.
The Only Review You Need September 16, 2008
Edward A. Zieman (Chicago)
2 out of 33 found this review helpful
Ok, first off I didn't read this book. Nor do I know who the author is or what it's about. But look at the cover. It's soooo stupid. I mean, come on, what's the stupid kid in the front doing? Is he even in the book? And why is it just a little picture with all that white around? I hate when they do that. When I draw I never leave a bunch of empty space unless it's supposed to be snow. I hope it doesn't snow as much as it did last year. My car is terrible in the snow. In conclusion, this book leaves something to be desired.
Love,
Ted
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