Netherland Pdf Summary Reviews By Joseph O’Neill

Netherland Pdf Summary

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 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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Netherland Review

Andrew Paxman

4.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful but understated, rather like cricket
Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2008

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Hans van den Broek is a pleasant chap: observant, often witty, cricket-loving, and kind to the strangest of strangers. This characterization of the narrator, along with some beautiful and perceptive prose, is what gives Netherland its special appeal, for this is a retrospective novel of sparse drama and little suspense. Another attraction is the unusual milieu: the New York cricket scene, and its largely South Asian and West Indian membership. A second milieu, the famously offbeat Chelsea Hotel, is a tad predictable as an urban microcosm (as is the amiable eccentricity of its inhabitants) but O’Neill refreshes the device with gentle humor. Passages set in Holland and London add further cosmopolitanism, quite fitting to this story of global migrants.

Chuck Ramkissoon, Hans’s driven and ethically suspect friend, is a Trinidadian Gatsby for our times, a self-centered dreamer with a shady fortune who still inspires affection and loyalty. And there’s much of Nick Carraway about Hans: a level-headed outsider both drawn to and wary of his exotic friend, a capable man who makes a decent living in the city but opts to follow his heart and leave. Where Netherland differs most from Gatsby is in its embrace of New York. This is a “post-9/11 novel,” or so Michiko Kakutani described it in the New York Times. While there’s some discussion of the malaise that followed the attacks – the strain threatens to scupper Hans’ marriage to Rachel (a smart but shrill Brit) – O’Neill is more interested in celebrating New York’s endless power to create possibility for new generations of immigrants. NYC is a vortex of enthusiasm, and though Hans is rather unhappy there, he warms to its energizing, regenerating effect on others.

Without overdoing it, O’Neill peppers his tale with arresting imagery. The Staten Island cricket field where Hans plays is surrounded by houses with elaborate gardens. “For as long as anyone can remember, the local residents have tolerated the occasional crash of a cricket ball, arriving like a gigantic meteoritic cranberry, into their flowering shrubbery.” O’Neill does a fine job of explaining cricket to the American majority without boring the initiated.

The story has a meandering structure, switching back and forth in time, a fractured chronology that encourages connections and contrasts. But it’s overdone. It’s self-consciously literary. The main effect is to de-emphasize drama and keep the focus on observation, yet O’Neill could have struck a better balance between action and thought. We have the makings of a much more emotionally compelling story – What will happen to Chuck and his dream of a first-class Brooklyn cricket ground? What will happen to Hans and Rachel’s marriage? – but these outcomes are revealed within the first two pages. Rather like a five-day game of cricket between teams unafraid of a draw, the novel is an exercise in understatement, eliciting only moderate emotional investment, mildly pleasurable with occasional flashes of brilliance.

Since critics (NYT, New Yorker) consider Netherland exemplary, it seems to me that Tom Wolfe’s complaint of 20 years ago is still valid: modern fiction remains too concerned with literary effect and intellectual contemplation and too little interested in enthralling stories. I’m not arguing for gratuitous pushing of readers’ buttons, or for catharsis, but for the kind of alternately unsettling and inspiring storytelling that Wolfe advocated when he called for a return to the spirit of Dickens. The “post-9/11 novel” surely deserves as much.

Gary Severance

VINE VOICE

5.0 out of 5 stars Substance and Structure
Reviewed in the United States on July 7, 2009

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Netherland is a novel about substance and structure, foundations and constructions of memory, current events, and imagination. O’Neill’s characters search their memories for lost time and find applications of essential sources of courage when the security of their personal lives and general social stability disintegrate. The events of 911 brought down the Twin Towers, but the characters find that the substance of life is in the netherland, the area below and beneath the public parts of their personalities. It is in this nether region that the fountainhead of life exists. It is largely obscured by the pseudo-structure of unreflective, habitual daily activities. With the courage of imagination, the characters tap into this area and apply the skills and emotions of the past to help them in the apparent current collapse of reason. The game of cricket provides a metaphor for understanding the integration of substance and structure in the characters’ personalities. The reader can imagine the beautiful grass fields cut in patterns with carefully marked boundaries. The pitch is the center of action bounded by wickets and guarded by umpires, a carefully laid out rectangle of packed earth with very short grass compared to the wider field. Rules of bowling, batting, and fielding are strict and complex. For the narrator Hans, cricket dominates many of his childhood memories in the Netherlands. Of course there is the beautiful structure of the game, with vivid memories of sights, sounds, scents, and feel of the bat in his hands and the turf under his feet. It is the substance of his memories that emerges to help him rebuild his life and appreciate the recovery of people from the disasters of the turn of this Century. Cricket in his mind is all about doing the right thing; not looping the ball with a broad swing but rather using the unique contours of the field to ground the ball past the outfielders. Hans remembers and ressurects his own way of batting, of following the rules of cricket within the contours of the game. But more importantly, he remembers his fundamental identity with the game related to his hard won skill, understanding what is morally important, and the enduring personal idea of the combination of structure and function in the game of cricket. The individual’s foundation of personality is the source of stability even when the social and physical world falls apart and long term personal habits must be changed.

About Joseph O’Neill Author Of Netherland pdf Book

Joseph O'Neill
Joseph O’Neill

Joseph O’Neill Author Of Netherland pdf Book was born in Cork, Ireland, in 1964 and grew up in Mozambique, South Africa, Iran, Turkey, and Holland. His previous works include the novels This is the Life and The Breezes, and the non-fiction book Blood-Dark Track, a family history centered on the mysterious imprisonment of both his grandfathers during World War II, which was an NYT Notable Book. He writes regularly for The Atlantic. He lives with his family in New York City.

Netherland pdf, Paperback, Hardcover Book Information

Netherland pdf Book
Netherland pdf Book
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Pantheon; 1st edition (May 20, 2008)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0307377040
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0307377043
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.75 x 1 x 9 inches
  • Best Sellers Rank: #676,678 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #8,398 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction
  • #33,747 in Literary Fiction (Books)
  • Customer Reviews: 4.0 out of 5 stars    434 ratings

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