Netherland by Joseph O'Neill

[Freewheeling Andy]

I've just finished reading this, and absolutely loved it.

 

Which is very surprising for me, for a couple of reasons. First, it's had a lot of hype - which is generally something which would put me off. Second - it's not really that heavily plot driven, and, at least superficially, works around a failing relationship of wealthy people torn between London and New York.

 

Doesn't that sound terribly dull?

 

Anyway, instead, unlike most of those sorts of books, the central character isn't given to preening introspection and all that horrible existential nonsense. Or at least isn't given to voicing those thoughts.

 

Instead what you have is a book of lovely parallels and parables, really.

 

This will, of course, be slightly spoilerish, but not too bad because there's really not much of a plot to spoil.

 

But what you have is a Dutchman, married to an English woman, in New York, just post-9/11 and them trying to deal with it personally; once his wife returns to England he's left trying to find out what to do with himself, and ends up playing cricket. It's not really a book about cricket, but the cricket, like everything else, is part of the metaphor and parralel in the book.

 

The things that seem misplaced in New York - like Dutchmen and Cricket - turn out, of course, to have been there for a long, long time. As has the seedy underside of gangsterism, for that matter. The book dwells, without being patronising, on the amazingly multi-ethnic nature of that city, too. And works around the unreal, slightly bizarre feel of the place post-9/11 when people are inclined to go slightly mad, but at the same time with everything carrying on superficially as normal.

 

It's a lovely book, written incredibly lightly. And really, it's another of the great redemptive books. When the relationship between Hans and Rachel recovers (this is no spoiler, honestly, it's mentioned on page one of the book), they discover they're still going well, but the relationship has been changed by the break between them, and I feel that's a metaphor, too, for the author's relationship with New York, which he still loves but which he feels is also changed, different, to the New York he knew before 9/11.

 

And it's really easy to read, and despite the fact it's not plot-heavy, there's enough incident and enough interesting characters to keep me gripped. I'm, retrospectively, really rather surprised that it didn't even make the Booker shortlist last year.

[chesilbeach]

Sounds interesting. I've had my eye on this for a while, because I'm intrigued by a book set in New York with cricket involved! I've not heard much of the hype, so that hasn't bothered me, but I'm trying to resist buying books at the moment, at least until I've reduced the TBR pile significantly, so I probably won't get it for a while but I'm pretty certain I'll pick it up in the future.