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3.26 AVERAGE
3.26 AVERAGE
I enjoyed learning about cricket and found the emigree's take on NYC and post 9/11 America interesting, but it lost my attention. Chuck Ramkissoon is not Jay Gatsby and I began to really hate Hans' wife as the novel went on (I think that was the intention). Perhaps if I was a New Yorker it would have had more impact.
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I loved the story's unique lens on the immigrant experience in post-9/11 New York and will be recommending it to my fellow New Yorkers.
Underwhelming. I loved the descriptions of cricket, both community cricket and the contemporaneous international references. I also enjoyed the Chuck scenes, by far the most interesting character. On the whole though, the book was just too meandering. The excessive jumping back and forth in time was also disorienting.
A good book, but not the great book many seem to think it is.
A good book, but not the great book many seem to think it is.
Cute pun - Netherland is a Dutch main character, vacillating between two cities, New York and London, in the ambiguous wake of 9/11. He is truly neither here nor there.
This is an incredibly well-written book. The language is beautiful and carefully chosen, and the author is a pro. It is also an interesting, though not world-shattering storyline. Read if you are sick of blockbuster first-time novels with crap prose. Spend a minute and immerse yourself in a quirky plot with quirky, broken characters. It is worth it.
This is an incredibly well-written book. The language is beautiful and carefully chosen, and the author is a pro. It is also an interesting, though not world-shattering storyline. Read if you are sick of blockbuster first-time novels with crap prose. Spend a minute and immerse yourself in a quirky plot with quirky, broken characters. It is worth it.
Despite O'Neill's obvious talents as a writer, this story never quite pulled me in. His prose is technical, elegant and clearly the work of a gifted, serious writer. But it's also lacking an inherent soulfulness that is practically required for this type of coming-of-age tale. Proust once said that all great literature in written in a kind of foreign language. O'Neill writes in a way that is pleasing to read - indeed, that is why so many people seem to have loved this novel - but is less adept at communicating his, or at least his character's, unique truths. He often gets close but, in a manner of speaking, his words get in the way. And for that, this otherwise promising novel falls to a category of merely well-written books.
There were many things I liked about this book, but there were a couple of passages that provoked guffaws, and the estranged marriage at the center of the narrative was intensely irritating.
How have none of my GoodReads friends read this book?! Go pick it up right now!
In the early part of September, The New Yorker published a series of brief interviews with contributors about their experience with 9/11 - both the event and the aftermath. The final question in each essay asked which piece of work to emerge from 9/11 has had the most lasting impact on their lives, perceptions, etc. Several respondents mentioned Netherland, so I added it to my list.
Netherland isn't about 9/11, but it's constantly there in the background, the hinge-point for the before and after of one man's life. Which isn't to say that 9/11 caused the novel's subsequent events - rather, it was an excuse for a separation, which then sets the narrator adrift in New York, eventually finding himself - literally and figuratively - in a sea of immigrants on the cricket pitch.
One respondent wrote that Netherland "seems to capture with great poignancy that powerful sense that a certain kind of world has slipped away." This summarizes the book better than I possibly can. It's wonderful and wonderfully written, full of sadness and loss and exploration. I couldn't put it down and now that I'm finished, I can't stop thinking about it.
In the early part of September, The New Yorker published a series of brief interviews with contributors about their experience with 9/11 - both the event and the aftermath. The final question in each essay asked which piece of work to emerge from 9/11 has had the most lasting impact on their lives, perceptions, etc. Several respondents mentioned Netherland, so I added it to my list.
Netherland isn't about 9/11, but it's constantly there in the background, the hinge-point for the before and after of one man's life. Which isn't to say that 9/11 caused the novel's subsequent events - rather, it was an excuse for a separation, which then sets the narrator adrift in New York, eventually finding himself - literally and figuratively - in a sea of immigrants on the cricket pitch.
One respondent wrote that Netherland "seems to capture with great poignancy that powerful sense that a certain kind of world has slipped away." This summarizes the book better than I possibly can. It's wonderful and wonderfully written, full of sadness and loss and exploration. I couldn't put it down and now that I'm finished, I can't stop thinking about it.
Well-written.
The Amsterdam and NYC thread is very close to my heart. The Trinidad connection was just a bonus because I was there earlier this year.
The Amsterdam and NYC thread is very close to my heart. The Trinidad connection was just a bonus because I was there earlier this year.
This is a book that's a meditation on setting--time and place--more than anything else. It tells the story of a Dutch businessman alone in the Chelsea hotel after 9/11. But it's not really about that. Hans rediscovers his love of cricket and eventually makes his way back to his estranged family in London, while spending time with an extraordinary denizen of New York, Chuck Ramkissoon, an entrepreneur and dream-spinner of uniquely American, and New Yorkian, sensibility. "Netherland" doesn't have much plot beyond this, and to be honest I sort of had to push my way through it, but it did have some gorgeously evocative and incredibly witty passages. The visuals of the book, from a bedraggled drag queen with angel wings, to a remote cricket field in the outer boroughs shining in the son, a mom and her son ice-skating up a river in Holland, have stuck with me and continue to haunt me.