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    Netherland
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    Netherland
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    Netherland
    Ebook322 pages6 hours

    Netherland

    By Joseph O’Neill

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    In early 2006, Chuck Ramkissoon is found dead at the bottom of a New York canal.

    In London, a Dutch banker named Hans van den Broek hears the news, and remembers his unlikely friendship with Chuck and the off-kilter New York in which it flourished: the New York of 9/11, the powercut and the Iraq war. Those years were difficult for Hans – his English wife Rachel left with their son after the attack, as if that event revealed the cracks and silences in their marriage, and he spent two strange years in New York’s Chelsea Hotel, passing stranger evenings with the eccentric residents.

    Lost in a country he'd regarded as his new home, Hans sought comfort in a most alien place – the thriving but almost invisible world of New York cricket, in which immigrants from Asia and the West Indies play a beautiful, mystifying game on the city's most marginal parks. It was during these games that Hans befriends Chuck Ramkissoon, who dreamed of establishing the city's first proper cricket field. Over the course of a summer, Hans grew to share Chuck's dream and Chuck's sense of American possibility – until he began to glimpse the darker meaning of his new friend's activities and ambitions.

    ‘Netherland’ is a novel of belonging and not belonging, and the uneasy state in between. It is a novel of a marriage foundering and recuperating, and of the shallows and depths of male friendship. With it, Joseph O'Neill has taken the anxieties and uncertainties of our new century and fashioned a work of extraordinary beauty and brilliance.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins UK
    Release dateOct 25, 2012
    ISBN9780007380787
    Unavailable
    Netherland
    Author

    Joseph O’Neill

    Joseph O’Neill lives in New York and teaches at Bard College. He is the author of four novels, Netherland (longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2008),The Dog, This Is the Life and The Breezes, as well as a memoir, Blood-Dark Track. His short stories have been published in the New Yorker and Harper’s, and his literary criticism has appeared in the Guardian, the New York Times, the Irish Times, the Atlantic, Granta and other publications.

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    Reviews for Netherland

    3.5/5

    1,053 ratings95 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Netherland is one of those delightful novels that sweeps you into its world on the force of the author's beautiful use of language and narrative insight. Hans van den Brock is an alien in many senses. He is Dutch and living alone in New York City in 2006, as his wife, thrown by 9/11 and its aftermath, has taken the couple's young son and gone back to England, where she is from. Hans' sporting passion is cricket, and he soon gets involved with what he discovers to be a vibrant cricket scene in New York, playing as one of the only white men among a community of cricketers from the West Indies and South Asia. He soon makes the acquaintance of a forceful yet shadowing fellow, one Chuck Ramissoon, who is a-swirl with schemes and dreams and leaking knowledge on all sorts of subjects. The main theme, as I have noted, is alienation, but also perseverance in the face of sadness and loss. There are some passages that struck me so effectively that I went back and read them several times, and the plot moves along nicely, with swooping digressions and flashbacks that are seamless.The book is not perfect, certainly. Hans is a bit too much of that common fictional character, the emotionally passive person to whom life just sort of happens without his willing it. He is perceptive, so he can describe it well, but he's almost never in control. Also, the side theme of the cultural and national tapestry that is New York City seems a bit overdone to me. Just about every third world nationality is eventually mentioned, either on a cricket pitch or in a taxi cab, or in a restaurant or party. When Hans hails a ride from a Kyrgyz cabbie, I thought, "OK, I get it, already."But those are relatively minor quibbles. This book won the PEN/Faulkner Award and I can see why. It provides a very rewarding and enjoyable reading experience.
    • 3/5
      I've got mixed feelings on this one... Some moments of brilliance, but other times it was scattered and hard to follow. Not an easy read regardless. The story was also rather ordinary, don't expect an epic adventure here, but simply a story about a dutch/english immigrant who spends some time in NYC.
    • 1/5
      This book, for me, was basically the reading equivalent of watching a cricket match. It might make sense to someone, but that someone is not me. If I wasn't reading this for book discussion, I definitely wouldn't have finished it.
    • 5/5
      Netherland was truly one of the finest books I've read this year. O'Neill's writing is incredible, offering the reader a look at how one man tries to find his way and carve out a new life for himself after he is basically left alone in exile in New York City just after the events of 9/11. Without going into plot details (others have done it so well in many places), the book is simply beautiful. It's sad but at the same time funny, depicting at times what a nightmare it must be to be an immigrant (the scenes at the DMV had me laughing out loud) in this country, and the disconnection people often endure until they can find their own place or discover how to find meaning or recreate themselves by whatever means possible. I would highly recommend this book; it's definitely something you won't forget after you've read it. I read this about a week ago and still find myself thinking about it off and on. I don't think you need to live in New York City to appreciate it, either -- we're all kind of adrift in some aspect.
    • 5/5
      Netherland by Joseph O'Neill is often compared to F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. The two books do share a superficial similarity. Both take place in and around New York and both are narrated by an outsider. Both are centered on a fantastic character, one that inspires admiration in other men, but this character is not the narrator. There the similarities end.Though born in the Hague, Netherland's narrator is a Londoner, living in New York, where he works in finance, with his English wife and their young son. Shortly after the September 11 attacks, their marriage enters a period of trouble, and the narrator's wife returns to London, where she says she'll be safe, with their son. The narrator stays in New York, moves into the famed Chelsea Hotel, and becomes involved with a cricket league.Cricket, and the mix of men who play it, make up much of the novel. The narrator meets cricket enthusiast, one-time umpire Chuck Ramkissoon who drives a cab, runs an illegal lottery, and plans on building a cricket stadium in New York to convert America into a cricket loving country. When the narrator hires Chuck to teach him how to drive so he can get an American driver's license, he begins to spend time with Chuck and to learn more and more about his illegal business dealings, his family history, and his devotion to cricket. Along the way, the reader meets several other unusual characters, the narrator lives in the Chelsea Hotel after all, but none of these come to life the way Chuck Ramkissoon does.Netherland drew me in at first. The story is not exciting nor very compelling. It's difficult to understand why the narrator stays in New York when his family has moved back to London, and attempting to bring cricket to America is a charming idea, but it's difficult to accept that anyone who knows the country at all would ever see it as possible. (Americans don't even pay attention to World Cup Football, let alone cricket.) But in spite of all this, I was drawn in to the narrator's story, so much so, that I read 80 pages before realizing that I needed to get Dakota her dinner. Reading an outsider's take on one's country is inherently intriguing and the post September 11 setting makes it easy to empathize with the characters. Unfortunately, after feeding Dakota, I was never re-drawn in to the novel. So reading the rest of it became something of a slugfest.Netherland is very well written, and it probably has something profound to say about America after September 11, but it lacks a narrative thread to pull the reader through it all. We learn in the novel's opening scenes that Chuck Ramkissoon has been found dead in a canal, but this mystery does not become a reason to read the novel. Instead, the narrator jumps back and forth in time, revealing what he knows about Chuck, describing what his life in New York was like, discussing the changes in his relationship with his wife. Plot elements that could generate suspense are undermined by flash forwards and flashbacks so much so that would could have become a mystery is turned into a fictional memoir without much dramatic tension. Memoir works best when it draws the reader in.Since I was fully drawn in once, I'm giving Netherland by Joseph O'Neill four out of five stars
    • 4/5
      Another post 9/11novel? Well, yes and no. This one is only obliquely a novel of the new world order as we now know it after 9/11. Yet it probably exists only because of that event. I've read a number of works by Sebastian Barry recently, and expected a certain 'Irish' voice here. O'Neill's was decidedly different. Written in a meandering first-person reverie, a sort of memory associated style, Netherland pulls us back and forth through the five or so years after 9/11, the break-up of a marriage, and its subsequent reconciliation. O'Neills' prose style, somehow formal, its poetry almost hidden (it certainly does not stand out) took me some getting used to. I read it in two sittings, and it was not until the second one that I was in the flow.By coming at 9/11 via his circuitous route, O'Neill may have just rendered the most incisive details of the angst, the unease, the gnawing sense of vulnerability engendered by those events I've yet to read.Hans, a financial analyst, and his wife Rachel, a successful lawyer, find themselves spiritually adrift in New York. But then Hans has always, it seems, been a drifter of sorts. Rachel, who had initiated their move to New York in the first place, makes the decision to move back to London, and urges her husband not to accompany her and their young child. What follows is the soul searching and unique events of Hans' life living in New York's Chelsea Hotel as an abandoned father and husband.While living alone, Hans becomes involved with, of all things, the immigrant subculture of cricket. O'Neill, raised in Holland, knows all there is to know about cricket - and it shows. We're all familiar with the hold that baseball has on writers of a certain sweeping poetic bent. O'Neill subtly uses the game of cricket to tell us much about ourselves. Cricket as played by men in their native countries has by necessity adapted to the space and playing fields of America. Hans himself resists adapting his batting style to the smaller fields, stubbornly approaching the game as he did growing up. Cricket stands as a symbol of community, of unification, of togetherness - yet in America it also stamps the faithful as 'the other'. The game stands as a symbol of the yearning for a stake in the future of this America which means a notion of acceptance, of community - yet it also holds to the traditions of separate cultures, to the uniqueness of individuality and heritage.Hans' entry into this world is facilitated by one of the murkier, odd-ball characters of recent fiction: entrepreneur, gambler, gangster, dreamer, Trinidadian Chuck Ramkissoon. It's the demise of Chuck, who pursued the American Dream with an unwieldy panache that triggers in Hans that fever memory of reflection. It's through Chuck that Hans rebuilds his life and his own dreams.It is through O'Neills' scratching blow the surface of the American Dream - the nether land - that we may glimpse the fury with which it can be attacked by those who have forgotten how to dream.
    • 3/5
      me parecio una novela un poco frustrante. me gusta la prosa de este autor y la novela tiene muchas secciones buenas. me gusta la elegancia para articular algunas ideas. la trama sin embargo no me funciona. me parece que hay demasiados cambios entre presente y pasados. pierde propulsion. tambien se siente desenfocada. no ayuda tampoco que los personajes principales no son muy agradables. el narrador es medio bobo, la esposa es insoportable, y el amigo de trinidad es un listo. la amistad nunca se desarrolla. en realidad no hay mucha razon para lamentar su perdida. crei que iba a haber una sorpresa que explicaria la muerte, algo sobre los negocios turbios pero no, nada.
    • 4/5
      Excellent novel set in New York post 9/11 with a background of Cricket which I am sure is alien to most Americans.The desolate background in which the hero struggles with his marriage and remembers his childhood in the Netherlands add to the mystery of his friendship with another immigrant in a city and country coming to grips with the tragedy of the World Trade Center collapse.The novel was hard to put down and held the attention of the reader until the ending.The novel has dark undertones which manifest itself in the character of Chuck and the tragic end of his vision for a revival of cricket in New York.
    • 4/5
      An engrossing story very well written. It weaves in and out of various time and scenes with ease and precision. The 9/11 events are present but never in the middle of the story. And Chuck is a most mysterious character. Never thought I would spend so much time reading about cricket.
    • 4/5
      While I have traveled some over the course of my adult life I have never traveled to London; but my image of London was always that of a modern cosmopolitan metropolis. Thus it was with some surprise that I read of the "parochialism" of London as I began the last third of Joseph O'Neill's novel Netherland. The protagonist, a Dutchman named Hans van den Broek, has just returned from several years in New York City and is not pleased with the treatment he receives from the Londoners he meets. This is just one of several instances of what I would describe as hubris exhibited by Hans as he preens with a reflexive post-modern attitude that I did not find very appealing. While he is in London he finds out about his wife's affair with their "friend" Martin from his son. His wife merely nods to him and he is off into the night. This was not a surprise as I had been expecting them to separate since before page fifty, in fact it seemed like they had already done so, or at least behaved as if they ought to and they also seem to be able to get back together as well: all Hans' relationships seem to be both fleeting and in flux throughout his life.Hans' journey (memories of Thomas Mann) is an odyssey through the multicultural neighborhoods of New York City, spiked with bouts of Cricket fever inspired by his Trinidadian friend, Chuck Ramkisoon. Chuck is a man of many trades including driving instructor, but he is primarily a promoter of Chuck! When Hans leaves him for London that is a let down of sorts, but the novel maintains some interest, if nothing else for its' quirkiness and its ability to surprise - although Chuck's demise is not a surprise since the author (is this hubris as well?) introduces Chuck as a character through the report of his death. Have you ever found out you were a partner in an enterprise only after your supposed partner had "parted" this world? If you like a well-written off-beat novel with only minor flaws (some may not even notice them) then this may be a novel you should consider - you may find, as I did, that Hans' friend Chuck was the most interesting character of all.
    • 2/5
      I don't understand all the fuss over this, in my opinion, not particularly interesting nor well-written novel. In fact, I've enjoyed reading reviews of the novel more than reading the novel itself. I at first thought that my lack of appreciation stemmed from ignorance of the game of cricket, which functions as an extended metaphor for the immigrant postcolonial experience (here,in post 9/11 NYC)and also as a model for a mulitethnic, 21st century, urban, getting-along-in-a -civil-and-productive-fashion life. But O'Neill pushes the cricket references to the point where they become a conceit and, to my mind, simply boring. The disrupted love story between Hans and his estranged-for-awhile wife Rachel is unconvincing. Rachel is a rather selfish know-it-all and I found myself disappointed (to the extent that I could work up any emotional involvement in this novel at all)that Hans reunites with her (granted, his relationship with his son Jake is at stake). The story of Chuck Ramkissoon, the autodidact Trinidadian savant and businessman cum gangster (or vice versa) who ends up murdered (we never find out by whom) and floating in the Gowanus Canal is somewhat more intriguing than the story of Hans and Rachel, but not enough to pull the novel as a whole out of its doldrums. Enough said.
    • 1/5
      If this is what passes for a great modern novel, then I'll stick with more of the classics. I only read it because of the buzz around it being on President Obama's reading list.
    • 3/5
      This is normally not my type of book but it had a similar feel to The Great Gatsby.
    • 4/5
      Much to be said for long, slow, contemplative exposition.
    • 5/5
      This was a quick read. I enjoyed it alot, so I read it in a few sesions. I like the style - not much dialogue, lots of long expository paragraphs.The marital issues certainly got to me, since I have been having all sorts of relationship issues the past couple of years.
    • 3/5
      OK, so I wasn't as swept away as all the raving reviews.It was a beautifully written, rather dense book told retrospectively by Hans van den Brock, a financial analyst and his lawyer wife Rachel who spend 3 years in NYC before, during and after 9/11. The book is also about Hans his love of cricket and his relationship with his friend Chuck who has some shady never explained dealings; and his goal of making NYC the head of cricket in the US.Netherland is not only the home country of Hans birth, but the neither here nor there of his life - not NYC, not London, not married, not divorced. He is in limbo.
    • 3/5
      My book group chose this book for the month of June so I felt obligated to read it. I'd be lying if I didn't say that I was also a bit curious about it because Obama mentioned that he was reading it too, and if Obama is reading it then it MUST be good enough for me. Right? Initially I had a really hard time with it. At page 100, I was thinking about giving up on it. Why? Well, it was very wordy and there was a lot of internal dialogue which I don't normally "get." However, right around page 150, something clicked for me.The book centers around the sport of cricket, yet the main story really has nothing to do with cricket but I was so distracted with trying to understand the game that I think I missed some of the initial set-up. Once I realized that it wasn't about cricket, then things started to fall into place for me. The other thing I should mention, is although the setting is post 9/11, it's not really a huge part of the story. That surprised me.Basically, Hans is lonely. His marriage is falling apart. He has money but really nothing to show for it. He is desperate for love and acceptance and just sort of stumbles through life. Things happen to him. Well, he lets things happen to him. Oh, and he loves cricket. That pretty much sums it up.This is one of those books that you have to read for yourself. After discussing it with my book club, I did gain an appreciation for it that I did not have prior to the meeting. You really have to peel away the layers before you "get" it. However, you have to be patient enough to do that because the first few pages may not grab you right away, unless you enjoy a lot of internal dialogue. That said, in the end I was happy that I read it. Oh, and if you enjoyed The Great Gatsby, you will enjoy this book as there are a lot of similarities between the two.
    • 4/5
      This novel won the prestigious PEN/Faulkner Award and a friend recommended it after a discussion of some of its post-modern qualities. Although well-written, I am not entirely convinced it deserves the accolades showered upon it. First of all, it flips back and forth between first and third person, much like the narrative flips back and forth between present, future, and past. This book most definitely will require another read, so I can track these changes and see if some narrative justification exists for these shifts.O'Neill has written a fine, interesting story of a Dutch financial analyst, Hans, who travels with his wife, Rachel, to New York from London. The reason for these job changes does not come out in the early chapters, but only much further along. Had I had this information, my understanding of the events in the "present" would have made more sense, and the "future" events would have been more logical. Because O'Neill jumped around, following the motivations of these characters became a chore.Also, the early parts of the book -- the prose seems a bit stiff -- possesses a voice different from later parts, which seem more natural, like this passage, when Hans describes an incident from his childhood in the Netherlands:"The old visual domain was unchanged: a long series of unlit back gardens leading to the almost indiscernible silhouette of dunes. To the north, which was to my right, the Scheveningen lighthouse twinkled for a second, then fell dark, then suddenly produced its beam, a skittish mile of light that became lost somewhere in the blue and black above the dunes. These sand hills had been my idea of wilderness. Pheasants, rabbits, and small birds of prey lived and died there. On escapades with a friend or two, we would urge our twelve-year-old bodies under the barbed wire lining the footpaths and run through the sand-grass into the wooded depths of the dunes." (86)I got the impression this represented the height of mischief and rebellion for the young boy. This passage also reminds me of young Stephen Daedalus coping with the vagaries of Clongowes in Poratrait of the Artist as a Young Man. The novel contains long paragraphs that seem ever so slightly organized to prevent the conclusion that Hans is day dreaming or we are experiencing his stream of consciousness, I found myself frequently back-tracking to find out where I was. Despite these drawbacks, I could not bring myself to abandon the story. I cared about Hans, and took his side in the discussions with Rachel. Fortunately, I have a large book of cricket rules, so I could make sense of some of the many references to the sport. However, some deeper connection between life and cricket must lie buried in all this, but I do not know enough about the sport to figure that out. Four stars--Jim, 7/25/09
    • 4/5
      As his marriage disintegrates and his wife and son move back to London, Hans is left in post 9/11 New York City and takes up cricket again to fill his lonely hours. The novel reflects on modern marriage, the role of immigrants in modern American society, and Hans inability to find happiness with his stiff little Dutch self. A pretty good read.
    • 4/5
      Though I had hoped it would, this book never quite grabbed me emotionally. Though I enjoyed many passages and portions of the book, in the end I was left slightly dissatisfied. Though not one that understands the sport of cricket (or its appeal), the role it played was one of better features of the book - including the decision to change batting style despite the emotional challenge of doing so. A good book, but I was anticipating great.
    • 3/5
      How could I not read the novel endorsed by Barack Obama? The narrator of Netherland, Hans van den Broek is a well-to-do financial analyst living in Manhattan in the aftermath of 9/11. When his wife takes his son and flees to London, Hans copes with the loneliness and disorientation by playing cricket and by befriending a Trinidadian "businessman" (read: gangster) named Chuck Ramkisson.The novel is beautifully written (and the only book I've read in a long time that drove me to the dictionary a few times) but I have to say I admired it more than I enjoyed it. I want to say that the overall effect is more cerebral than emotional, but in fact Hans is av very vulnerable character and there's emotion all over the place. I think I'll need to revisit this later and try to connect with it in a more substantial way.
    • 5/5
      This dark, often pessimistic take on post-9/11 New York is told from the viewpoint of a Dutchman named Hans who has lived in Manhattan for over a decade with his wife. He feels he can claim the City for himself but realizes in the end he will always be known as the Dutch guy. The tragedy effects their marriage and she returns to London with their infant son. He remains in New York for work and becomes engulfed in playing cricket with other displaced non-Americans. This bizarre subculture leads him to befriend a mysterious Trinidadian named Chuck who has huge ideas and dark connections to parts of New York Hans hardly knew existed. Is it the therapeutic escape he needs or is it only another excuse for him to run away from his responsibilities? Netherland is captivating and a fine piece of fiction on the years following a time when one devastating and cowardly event brought together strange bedfellows and tore apart the most secure relationships.
    • 3/5
      Some of the most accurate descriptions of lonliness, marriage failure, and loss I've ever read. I have to say the Cricket stuff got boring for me, but as a metaphor, it worked. I love the title. He's dutch, NY was dutch and his world is a netherland during this part of his life. I like what another reader wrote...I think I admired this book more than loved it.
    • 4/5
      Nicely written and interwoven, especially if you like cricket, which I don't, so there was a bit too much cricket talk in it for me.
    • 3/5
      A significant work about an emotionally bleak post-9/11 that is at once invigorating and reflective. The great tragedy of that day is a shadow that falls over the characters and the events, but it wisely never takes over the novel. This is a reasonably suspenseful, well-paced book,even with some rather long-winded explanations of cricket, which I found myself skimming after a while. (O'Neill, is the author of an acclaimed memoir and a member of the Staten Island Cricket Club, and like a reviewer from the Guardian I couldn't help but wonder occasionally if he shouldn't have written a memoir-essay on New York cricket.) The writing is slightly self-aware at times, and some of the undeniably lovely lyric passages don't feel completely credible to the 1st person narrator. Still, many of the psychological aspects are piercingly sharp and the writing is both honest and subtle, although the main character, Hans, is ultimately less interesting, and more thinly-drawn than the novel's foil, Chuck, a Trinidadian self-made (and highly shady) business man who, we learn early on, has been murdered. Quibbles aside, O'Neill is a great observer of the human condition, and his descriptions of the occupants of the Chelsea Hotel alone are worth the effort.
    • 4/5
      The novel won a great deal of critical praise and was longlisted for last year's Booker Prize, as well as being nominated one of the ten best novels of 2008 by The New York Times and sweeping up the Pen/Faulkner Award. Obama was apparently also reading it.The cover is decorated with words lifted from reviews - Wonderful (Jonathan Safran Foer), Stunning (New York Times), Breathtaking (Observer). I felt a measure of guilt most of the way through the novel that I felt some ambivalence towards it. Most of the way through I just felt I couldn't get a handle on it, there didn't seem enough that was cohesive to hold it together, and I longed for that simple, old-fashioned thing - a good story, to take over.Netherland is a pretty unusual book : it's a novel about New York but focuses more on immigrant communities than the skyscrapers of Manhattan; it's a post-9/11 novel in which the incident is hardly mentioned (yet casts an enormous shadow); and its a novel about cricket set in a country where there sport is scarcely played at all.Financial analyst Hans van der Broek finds himself alone in New York when his wife Rachel leaves him to go back to London, and finds refuge in cricket, played almost entirely by immigrants, mainly Asian and from the Caribbean. He becomes friendly with Chuck Ramkissoon, the "oddball umpiring oracle", a wheeler-dealer businessman with dubious connections who takes him under his wing. Later Chuck is found murdered - his wrists handcuffed and his body thrown into the Gowanus Canal.But if if the reader expects the solving of and fallout from the murder to drive the story, this isn't the case at all. O'Neil actually says in the notes that accompany the novel that he actually abandoned a first draft because it was: ... undermined by a preoccupation with plot.And then there is Hans marriage to Rachel. We're never quite sure why she decides to leave him and take their son, Jake, back to London, and why she can't get back together with him. We're not privy to her thoughts and we aren't given the opportunity to warm to her, while Hans who comes across as ineffectual and inert. He drifts and allows matters to take their course, rather than taking any kind of decisive action. It isn't surprising that he finds himself following in the wake of the charismatic Chuck.Yet O'Neill catches Han's depression and sense of dislocation most convincingly, in the first person narration. He employs an almost stream-of-consciousness style where one memory flows back into another (very much in the style of John Banville in The Sea - I don't think that it is coincidence that O'Neill is also an Irish author), the novel moving between layers of time and recollection. I was also reminded very strongly - perhaps because of the introspection and aching melancholy - of Richard Ford's The Sportswriter : we get the sense of a real man doing his best to make sense of his circumstances. There are some beautifully observed scenes of New York, especially those which centered on his quirky neighbours in the Chelsea Hotel (where the author actually lives), and his visits to Brooklyn. I appreciate too what I learned about cricket (especially how pitch conditions and the weather affect play, and about how it is a game of perspectives - knowing when to switch from the wide view to the telescopic).But I'm still not sure what to tell you about whether I enjoyed the novel or not. I still feel I'm pulling together the threads and making sense of it, but I suspect that this might be one I want read again.
    • 3/5
      I looked forward to reading this book with great anticipation and considered the NYTimes designation as a Top Ten Book of the Year as all the endorsement I needed. But I have to say that it was a bit of a disappointment. The story is narrated by Hans VanDenBroek, a financier based in London who moves to NYC with his attorney wife and son prior to 9/11. After 9/11 she decides to move back to London, where she feels she and her son will be safer and from then on the couple has a strained long distance relationship. The story centers around this marriage, cricket, the secondary character Chuck Ramkissoon, a cricket referee who becomes friends with Hans, and the different cultures of NYC. Although the prose was beautiful in parts, the story did not draw me in. It was interesting to learn about the cultural differences in NY but way too much of the story dealt with cricket, which I knew nothing about and, even with the lengthy descriptions that this book provides, still do not know much about. The one mystery that provided a plot line, namely, who killed Chuck and tossed his body in the Gowanus Canal is not resolved. I had a difficult time even finishing the last ten pages. I could not really recommend this book.
    • 5/5
      Hans van den Broek, a Dutch banker, and his wife Rachel, an English lawyer, move to New York City from London to pursue their careers. Rachel never quite recovers from the attacks of September 11th, and eventually moves back to London with their son, and without Hans. Adrift in a world where he feels like he has no place, depressed at the loss of his family but unable to do anything about it, he eventually falls in with a ragtag bunch of immigrant men who play cricket once a week. On the outskirts of this group is the great dreamer, Chuck Ramkissoon, whose great dream is to build a cricket stadium, and introduce it to the American mainstream.As others have noted, this is not a novel of plot. The murder mystery doesn't play a huge role. The relationship drama hardly registers. It's the story of one man's quiet struggle with himself, and of the immigrant's experience in a strange land. Less a march through a story and more a beautifully written meander through the mind. Highly recommended.
    • 3/5
      This is a very interesting book, quite brooding and lonely feeling, and it never quite regains any sense of true happiness (maybe acceptance?), so it will no doubt, not be everyone's cup of tea. That said, I found some of O'Neill's observations about a troubled marriage, loneliness and yearning to be beautiful and wise. Some sections actually took my breath away, and made me want to cry, so powerful were they. I also thought the journies of two total strangers becoming friends and accepting each others' differences, was well done. But as a whole, the novel really never came together for me. The flashbacks and timeframes, as some have pointed out, are a bit hard to follow. I also had no sympathy whatsoever for the wife. She was just not likeable whatsoever. I never really "got" what the protagonist saw in her. Anyway, three stars for beautiful writing, observations and just a purely interesting time and place (post 911 NYC as seen through the eyes of immigrants of all kinds).
    • 4/5
      the google summary states: 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. the above does a nice job of detailing the plot aspects of the the novel, but more than the plot is the mood of the book. It is wonderfully written and at times the sentences alone make it a joy. The 9/11 element in the story is not really part of the narrrative, but rather the reason for the despair of the narrator. The tumbling towers are symbolic of his marriage and become the reason that his wife leaves. Hans finds himself adrift trying to get solace from his success at work but ( Pg. 52: " But by the fall of 2002, even my work, the largest of the pots and pans I'd placed under my life's leaking ceiling, had become too small to contain my misery." He explains " we all find ourselves in temporal currents and that unles you're paying attention you'll discover, often too late, that an undertow of weeks or of years has pulled you deep into trouble." What is interesting is that the style of the novel - being told in reflection - let's the reader know that in fact his marriage is okay, that the mysterious Chuck R is murdered. these things are then reflected upon as Hans reviews his life' s events during his stay at the Charles Hotel in NYC. Some reviews have cited the Great Gatsby comparison and I see the resemblance- the distanced narrator who is enamored by the rich schemer. The final part ends thoughtfully and satisfyingly as Hans reflects back on his mother and remembers learning from her what the interesting sites really are. In reading about the book ,it was interesting to hear several podcasts that nicely detail the importance of the book. The author lived in the Charles Hotel that he depicts in the novel as well. It's possible that I admired this novel more than I loved it. It is certainly an important work and worth reading.