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Nov 28, 2008

Edan rated it:

I want to say something about this novel because although it impressed me and I respected O'Neill's skills as a writer, I didn't find it that enjoyable. There's a pleasing boldness to the syntax and diction, and there were a few passages that felt, well, wise, and when I gave myself some time to really dig into the text, I was impressed by the fluid time shifts and how the story felt unstructured and impeccably structured at once. But, the novel never pulled me in; I never really felt inside o More...

7 comments like (41 people liked it)

Aug 01, 2008

Cory rated it:

Beautiful. At times, devastating.

Firstly: this book is not about the sport of cricket, so if that's at all a hindrance to your reading it, let that go. Sure there's some talk of the game and its particulars, and it creates a central catalyst from which the action of the story takes place, but it is about so much more: the city of New York post 9/11, the state of being lost, and the nation one comes from, goes to, and feels an outsider of or assimilated into, not to mention the vast u More...

12 comments like (24 people liked it)

Jul 23, 2008

Joshua rated it:

Am I the only one who didn't like this book? I rarely if ever give up on a book, but if I wasn't reading this for a book club, I would have stopped reading early on.

The main character is boring, dry and unmotivated. He doesn't seem to care much about anything, so why should we? Aren't books supposed to be about the most exciting/scary/miserable/wonderful parts of the character's lives, not the drudgery of day-to-day, ho-hum slogging through a miserable existence? Perhaps I miss More...

9 comments like (28 people liked it)

Aug 08, 2008

Yulia added it

Mr. O'Neill, please don't condescend to explain to us the history of cricket in New York City, how our fields are all wrong but really have their own common charm; or tell us the aeteliogy of "aftermath," making a broad and awkward simile about how lawn mowing really does remind those who are inclined to make general observations (you) of memory, of how it keeps growing back not matter how much you want it to be tidy; or of how what passes for grass is not flagrant in the States and ne More...

9 comments like (15 people liked it)

Jan 05, 2010

Gregory rated it:

“How do you re-imagine your life?”

When I first read about “Netherland” it was presented as a 9/11 novel. This is not entirely the case. In fact, 9/11 the day barely figures into the plotline at all – it is the tumultuous after-effects of 9/11 that are explored in Joseph O’Neill’s infinitely clever, if flawed, novel. At the outset we meet Hans van den Broek in present-day London, where he has recently relocated in order to rejoin his wife and son after a trial separation. He get More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

May 28, 2008

Lauren rated it:

It's really too late to talk about this book, but I had to finish it tonight and that should say it all. The loneliness of New York (and let's face it: modern life or whatever that means to you) is so palpable in this book. Chuck and Hans are two unlikely friends, thrown together in a post 9/11 New York, out of step with their families and connected by a love of cricket. This connection makes up for the wayward actions played out by these men.

Postcolonial, post 9/11: Isn't it all ab More...

0 comments like (9 people liked it)

Nov 24, 2008

Jessica rated it:

This book, somewhat reminiscent of Ian McEwan's book Saturday, tells the story of Hans, a banker originally from The Hague, and late of London, who lives in New York with his lawyer wife, Rachel, and their small son until the events of 9/11 sour Rachel on their New York life and she and the little boy return to London. Hans, finding himself adrift in the city, living at the Chelsea Hotel, is befriended by a Trinidadian businessman who introduces him to the New York immigrant subculture centering More...

1 comment like (5 people liked it)

Jun 23, 2008

Beth rated it:

Netherland received much pre-release praise and deservedly. If Netherland is not a masterpiece, and I certainly am not saying it is not, then Joseph O'Neill is at the very least a masterful writer. Reading this book is like being taken on a treasure hunt through New York; London; The Netherlands; the game of Cricket; and mostly, love, loneliness, and loss. Drift along O'Neill's stream of consciousness and you'll be treated to gems of glittering prose, deep psychological understanding, and ph More...

2 comments like (7 people liked it)

Nov 29, 2010

Ken-ichi rated it:

I don't know, I might get back to this. I like the side characters, the writing is nice, but God, middle aged apathy and anomie is just about the most boring subject imaginable, pretty much on par with teenage vampire romance.

Later...

After sampling the praise heaped upon this novel by the literary establishment (and at least one of my more literarily-inclined friends), sitting down and reading it did nothing to assuage my acute sense of literary insecurity. What, exactl More...

13 comments like (10 people liked it)

Oct 24, 2010

Steve rated it:

If you feel culturally discombobulated reading this most recent book by Joseph O’Neill (the prize-winning half-Irish, half-Turkish writer) narrated by Hans (the Dutch investment analyst working in New York by way of London) whose two main topics are cricket (as played by ex-pat West Indians) and his wife (the Venusian to his Martian), that may have been part of the point. Hans doesn’t feel completely at home in any of his worlds. He confesses to being lost and clueless. The more you read, tho More...

4 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 21, 2008

Chris rated it:

purchased this book off big hype id been reading about it. another post 9/11 book about new york (it seems like thats all i read these days!) that deals with one man's coping (or lack thereof) after his family returns to london after the towers fell. couldnt really get into it after the first 100 pages or so - i could only read so much about cricket - but i found the more i read, the more i liked. o'neill comes across as a very intelligent author who writes beautiful sentence after sentence. More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

May 31, 2008

Vincent rated it:

Terrific novel about post 9/11 New York from an outsider's perspective. While the cricket theme is at times stretched to accommodate more than it seems capable, Netherland remains a creative and unexpected extended metaphor for the fluid nature of "American culture"--which is, precisely and paradoxically, the absence of a coherent culture as such--and its methods of acknowledging, accommodating and ultimately adapting to new strands of foreign cultural practice.

Netherland a More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jul 16, 2008

Lee rated it:

An admirable (more than enviable) read? I really admired the prose at times, especially when describing NYC. Learned a lot about cricket, too. But didn't quite believe in Chuck or even the narrator, felt the author breathing life into a seam in the back of his characters' necks. Didn't love that the narrator makes $10,000 each working day, or has $2 million in savings. Didn't laugh or smile or chortle at much of anything. Made few noises while reading. But again, I really respected the prose 90% More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Jan 26, 2009

Kristen rated it:

This Booker Award nominee has all the makings of a favorite book for me-- a lonely man searching for his purpose in life. I love understated, quiet novels that force readers to look at everyday happenings and interactions in a different way. And this book started off lovely with passages like this:

Some people have no difficulty in identifying with their younger incarnations: Rachel, for example, will refer to episodes from her childhood or college days as if they'd happened to her More...

2 comments like (7 people liked it)

May 25, 2008

Mike rated it:

People seem to love this. I didn't. James Wood's glowing review in the New Yorker draws comparisons to Bellow and then V.S. Naipaul, and I could tease out my relative lack of excitement against his points. Unlike Bellow and more like my sense of Naipaul, O'Neill's prose and characters struck me as fussily detailed in an "artful" way, so that you're always paying attention to the precise bit of prose, rarely swept away by the bombast or exuberant vocal performances of outsized person More...

9 comments like (10 people liked it)

Aug 19, 2008

kira rated it:

Most big reviews I read of this book ahead of time made a big deal of the role of cricket in this book. Maybe I'm a special kind of reader (not necessarily in a good way), but I found it quite easy to quickly gloss over the detailed parts about cricket and still come away feeling as if I'd read a substantial, satisfying novel. This book is about the experiences of immigrants, of outsiders, of husbands and wives and parents, of New Yorkers, or transplants to New York. It's about living in New Yor More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Nov 22, 2008

Nathan rated it:

This much praised novel was one of the recent books I was eager to read and, just as the reviewers promised, it is full of beautiful writing and elegant mediations on post-9/11 America and the role of sport in our lives. The best passages of the book were those about cricket and in these pages O'Neill manages to capture the beauty and elegance of the communities sport engenders in a way I've not seen before in fiction. In the end, though, the book doesn't quite hold together. I was far more i More...

2 comments like (4 people liked it)

Feb 27, 2009

Rebecca rated it:

I'm befuddled about why this book did so well--the only reason I'm still reading it is because I assume something amazing must happen in the middle of it?

Or, thousands of readers secretly want to be cricket players?

There are some lovely descriptions of New York, but that alone isn't enough to make a book for me--there is a lack of animation here that casts a pall over the entire thing. Yes, this character is somewhat frozen--but if he is so frozen that a reader can't fin More...

1 comment like (4 people liked it)

Apr 05, 2010

Michael rated it:

When Chuck Ramkissoon, the Trinidadian small-time gangster and big-time cricket dreamer, takes Hans van den Broek, the "Flying Dutchman" seeking a home port that may not exist, to Green-Wood Cemetery to see the grave of Henry Chadwick, Hans comments, "My attention was given over to the small square stone in the grass -- a maverick slab of crazy paving, one might have thought -- on which Chuck had carelessly placed a foot. It was a gravestone. A word was engraved on it: DAISY." More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 03, 2009

Gail rated it:

I was torn between three and four stars for this book, but opted for four because this is a book that seems better the more you think about it after reading it. It's an excellent exposition of the waxing and waning of emotions in personal relationships, marriage in particular, and how central those emotions are to the human condition. It is very well written, but it did not grab me and hold onto me. Nor did I put it down and say: "Wow, that was really good." The paragraphs are way More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Jan 01, 2009

John rated it:

An alternately brilliant and disappointing novel that doesn't quite measure up to the hype. When I saw that both Michiko and James Wood had pretty much anointed this as one of the greatest New York novels ever, how could I not read it? In their defense, much of the panty-throwing is justified. I don't know that I've come across such breathtaking descriptions of the five burroughs and the imagining of the Chuck Ramikissoon character was brilliant. I still have no interest in cricket, but appr More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 15, 2008

KnowWhatILike rated it:

I should have counted the words I ought to have looked-up while reading Joseph O'Neil's "Netherland." They must have numbered at least one hundred. Not a bad trick to play on someone with a masters degree from an Ivy League university. Also, there were those inordinately complex sentences that I needed to reread at least three times to get a glimmering of their meaning. Perhaps, an English professor's dream and the basis for a literary essay. But the makings for a great novel? I t More...

3 comments like (5 people liked it)

Nov 03, 2008

Ryan rated it:

I suppose it would be a compliment to the author that his prose is so shimmering and note-perfect that I am acutely self-conscious of even my own words in reviewing his novel. It's almost a call-to-arms, this slim book on post-9/11 New York informing us, "Yes, books can be this intelligent and unassuming, still."

What's most striking is the way in which Netherland is impressive: the "great" books of the past few years have showcased major accomplishments in voice, More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Sep 15, 2008

Will rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

7 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 29, 2008

Benjamin rated it:

The first of my "hospital books", which I saved all summer to read during what ended up being my 9 day marathon at Weiss.

I found this book to be remarkably well written, both in prose, in structure, and in it's use of themes. The characters are very realistic and quite rounded. Their problems and feelings smack of a genuine authenticity, so much so that I wondered how much of the book could be autobiographical.

The narrator's wife leaves him and takes their son More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 26, 2008

Tom rated it:

Sad, funny, moving, beautiful observations on love, loss, and the panoply of life in the boroughs of NY post 9/11. (That's right, multiple boroughs - as in beyond Manhatten! At first I thought it was this magical realism thing he had going on with mystical places like "Brooklyn" and "Staten Island," but these places seemed so full-realized in his writing that I looked them up in an atlas, and wouldn't you know it, they really and truly exist!)
This shoots to near the t More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Sep 24, 2008

Amanda rated it:

A beautiful portrait of life in New York -- yes, after 9/11, but this book is not about 9/11. Our narrator, Hans, is not-quite-Nick-Carroway, relates the events leading up to the death of his friend, a Trinidadian immigrant, cricket-loving, Brooklyn transplant and Gatsby stand-in, Chuck Ramkissoon. And while much has been made of how Netherland is about cricket, cricket is simply a part of the story, not the story. I don't know anything about cricket and I didn't have a problem with it's role. Y More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)

Nov 30, 2008

Catherine added it

I recently read this as part of a grad-level class on "Post-9/11 Fiction" and it is definitely a haunting portrayal of New York between 1998 and 2005. Even more distubring than the images of New York, which are by no means at the forefront of the novel, are the descriptions of Hans' crumbling marriage and his attempt to start over after his wife and son move back to London.

I know many people find Hans to be cold and detached, passively accepting events rather than fighting More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jun 16, 2008

Scott rated it:

I found this book one of the best I've read in recent years in contemporary literature. The book is about empire, or the dissolution of empire, as symbolized by cricket and 9/11. O'Neill chose a Dutch main character who has spent significant time in England and is struggling in New York after the collapse of the towers. Needless to say, the author is touching upon some major colonial strains--Dutch New York, British America, etc.--and then he populates his book with a host of transplants from fo More...

3 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 04, 2008

Bobby rated it:

The novel follows Hans van den Broek, a Dutch banker now working in New York City. After being forced out of their Manhattan loft because of their proximity to the 9/11 events, Hans's fearful wife promptly leaves with his son to return to her native London. Through seemingly serendipitous encounters, Hans becomes consumed with the hidden community of West Indian cricket and more specifically with Chuck Ramkissoon, a mysterious Trinidadian with an entrepreneurial spirit and dreams of transforming More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)