Netherland (Vintage Contemporaries) - Softcover

O'Neill, Joseph

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0307388778 ISBN 13: 9780307388773

Publisher: Vintage, 2009

Synopsis

New York Times Book Review Best Book of the Year

In a New York City made phantasmagorical by the events of 9/11, and left alone after his English wife and son return to London, Hans van den Broek 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. As the two men share their vastly different experiences of contemporary immigrant life in America, an unforgettable portrait emerges of an "other" New York populated by immigrants and strivers of every race and nationality.

About this title

Review:

"Fascinating.... A wonderful book." --President Obama, interviewed by Jon Meacham in Newsweek (May 25, 2009 issue)

"Stunning . . . with echoes of The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald's masterpiece . . . a resonant meditation on the American Dream." --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"Exquisitely written. . . . A large fictional achievement, and one of the most remarkable post-colonial books I have ever read. . . . Netherland has a deep human wisdom." --James Wood, The New Yorker

"I devoured it in three thirsty gulps, gulps that satisfied a craving I didn't know I had. . . . It has more life inside it than ten very good novels." --Dwight Garner, The New York Times Book Review

"Elegant.... Always sensitive and intelligent, Netherland tells the fragmented story of a man in exile--from home, family and, most poignantly, from himself." --Washington Post Book World

"Suspenseful, artful, psychologically pitch-perfect, and a wonderful read.... Joseph O'Neill has managed to paint the most famous city in the world, and the most familiar concept in the world (love) in an entirely new way" --Jonathan Safran Foer author of Everything is Illuminated

"Haunting.... O'Neill's elegant prose makes for a striking read." --Entertainment Weekly

"A beautifully written meditation on despair, loss, and exile." --USA Today

"Remarkable.... Note-perfect." --Vogue

"Outstanding.... A coming-of-middle-age tale." --Newsweek

"O'Neill's writing is unendingly beautiful." --The Los Angeles Times

"Brilliant.... A post-9/11 novel that takes us closer to understanding the emotional wreckage." --GQ

"Provocative, luminous.... A fine, darkly glowing novel." --The Boston Globe

"A dense, intelligent novel... O'Neill offers an outsider's view of New York bursting with wisdom, authenticity, and a sobering jolt of realism." --Publisher's Weekly (starred review)

"O'Neill writes a prose of Banvillean grace and beauty, shimmering with truthfulness, as poised as it is unsettling. He is a master of the long sentence, of the half-missed moment, of the strange archaeology of the troubled marriage. Many have tried to write a great American novel. Joseph O'Neill has succeeded." --Joseph O'Connor, author of Star of the Sea

"Somewhere between the towns of Saul Bellow and Ian McEwan, O'Neill has pitched his miraculous tent. Netherland is a novel about provisionality, marginality; its registers are many, one of the most potent being its extremely grown-up nostalgia. The dominant sense is of aftermath, things flying off under the impulse of an unwanted explosion, and the human voice calling everything back." --Sebastian Barry, author of A Long Long Way

From the Publisher:

'New York is not what most people imagine it to be. Just as marriage, family, friendship and manhood are not. Netherland is suspensful, artful, psychologically pitch-perfect, and a wonderful read. But more than any of that, it's revelatory. Joseph O'Neill has managed to paint the most famous city in the world, and the most familiar concept in the world (love) in an entirely new way.' Jonathan Safran Foer

`O'Neill writes a prose of Banvillean grace and beauty, shimmering with truthfulness, as poised as it unsettling. As well, this is a story that is hard to put down, for its characters are so real and their preoccupations so urgently of the now, that the book has the vividness of breaking news. He is a master of the long sentence, of the half-missed moment, of the strange archeology of the troubled marriage. Many have tried to write a great American novel. Joseph O'Neill has succeeded.' Joseph O'Connor

'Somewhere between the towns of Saul Bellow and Ian McEwan, O'Neill has pitched his miraculous tent ... The reader, almost imperceptibly, becomes little by little scorched by the novel's brilliance, irradiated by it, benignly." Sebastian Barry

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0307388778
• ISBN 13: 9780307388773
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272