Netherland

Joseph O'neill

ISBN 10: 1602853142 / ISBN 13: 9781602853140

Published by Center Point, 2008

About this Item

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.

Seller Inventory # 00106451379

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Netherland
• Publisher: Center Point
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1602853142
• ISBN 13: 9781602853140
• Binding: Hardback
• Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis

Abandoned amid the offbeat inhabitants of the Chelsea Hotel when his English wife and son return to London following September 11th, Hans, a banker originally from the Netherlands, struggles to find himself in his adopted country, until he stumbles upon a vibrant New York cricket subculture and the charismatic Chuck Ramkissoon. (General Fiction)

Review

'Netherland is so expertly woven that it is impossible for a reader not to admire what it essentially is - a beautifully written exploration of memory and self.' Sunday Telegraph

'The wittiest, angriest, most exacting and most desolate work of fiction we've yet had about life in New York and London after the World Trade Centre fell. I devoured it in three thirsty gulps, gulps that satisfied a craving I didn't know I had. O'Neill seems incapable of composing a boring sentence or thinking an uninteresting thought.' New York Times

'O'Neill writes about cricket with an insider's knowledge and a metaphorical sweep. The result is the first great American novel underpinned by a deep understanding of the complexity of spin bowling. A novel full of vividly descriptive passages that possess a heightened, almost hallucinatory, brilliance. A great American novel with an ordinary European everyman at its centre.' Observer

'Elegant and profound' Sunday Times

'Extraordinary. O'Neill is a writer of dizzying elegance.' FT

'It is hard to know which is stranger - that a great American novel has been written about cricket, or that a great cricket novel should be set in America. But both are true. Netherland is ambitious, intelligent and deeply perceptive.' The Times