Netherland, Joseph ONeill
Netherland, Joseph ONeill
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

Netherland

Author: Joseph O'Neill

Narrator: Jefferson Mays

Unabridged: 8 hr 33 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 01/09/2009


Synopsis

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.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Edan on November 28, 2008

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 rea......more

Goodreads review by Will on November 07, 2017

Chuck is dead. The rest is flashback. Hans van den Broek is from Holland, but lives in New York City circa 9/11 with his British wife. He is a successful equities trader with plenty of money, and an abiding love for cricket. After 9/11 his wife returns to London with their child, leaving not only Ne......more

Goodreads review by Glenn on May 26, 2015

I know many people loved this book. It made several “best of the year” lists when it was published in 2008 and won the prestigious PEN/Faulkner Award. More than one reviewer I respect compared it to The Great Gatsby. Yes, author Joseph O’Neill certainly knows how to write a gorgeous sentence or two,......more

Goodreads review by Ken-ichi on November 03, 2010

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 e......more

Goodreads review by Steve on August 11, 2009

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......more