Netherland – Joseph O’Neill

"That low-slung, scruffily commercial thoroughfare that stands in almost surreal contrast to the tranquil residential blocks it traverses, a shoddily bustling strip of vehicles double-parked in front of gas stations, synagogues, mosques, beauty salons, bank branches, restaurants, funeral homes, auto body shops, supermarkets, assorted small businesses proclaiming provenances from Pakistan, Tajikistan, Ethiopia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Armenia, Ghana, the Jewry, Christendom, Islam: it was on Coney Island Avenue, on a subsequent occasion, that Chuck and I came upon a bunch of South African Jews, in full sectarian regalia, watching televised cricket with a couple of Rastafarians in the front office of a Pakistani-run lumberyard."

Plot: A Dutch immigrant learns to drive in New York?  Let's build a cricket field?  The plot is rather obtuse here, but you don't really notice.  9/11 hangs over this book, but always at a distance.  A family breaks apart and the father is forced to actually live a life for possibly the first time in his life.  And he succeeds.  And along the way he sees America, just not the one we think we live in.


Why read it?:  Because it is simply fantastic.  Beautifully written, the 9/11 novel everyone was always looking for.  A land of immigrants, the signs and clues to their existence are still everywhere, and underneath a sea of white, they remain to make America run.

It is hard for me to imagine a more beautifully written book than this.  The way O’Neill puts words into phrases and sentences is truly remarkable, and with that he has put together the most brilliant take on 9/11 that I have ever read.  O’Neill comes at from the view of a foreigner and focuses on immigrants who seem to be on the margins of American society, but are, in fact, an integral part of the fabric that makes America what it is.

The novel is narrated by Hans, a Dutch equities analyst, who along with his British solicitor wife Rachel and their young son, is living in Manhattan when the Towers fall.  Forced to leave their luxury apartment, they end up somehow in the Chelsea Hotel.  The marriage deteriorates there and Rachel, increasingly uncomfortable in Bush’s America, soon leaves for England with their son.  Hans has difficulty fitting in under the best of circumstances, and his current situation has left him at a loss.  Alone, unsure of how he feels politically, or if he even feels that way at all, he finds solace in the game of cricket, which he played when he was younger back home, and had found it a way to meld into British society when he was there.  However, cricket in the US is a different fish;  played on makeshift fields and involving predominantly Caribbean and Asian immigrants, Hans is the odd man out here.   But he is welcomed into their world, and guided by Chuck Ramkissoon, a native of Trinidad, who has dreams of uniting the world through cricket.  It doesn’t take much to find the commonality with Jay Gatsby here; O’Neill makes the link fairly obvious. While the shattered American dream in Netherland is not the same as Fitzgerald was writing about, the characters in Netherland like Chuck are seeking one for their own.  Chuck, unfortunately, for all his optimism and visions of a better future, has like Jay Gatsby, a darker side that will eventually consume him.

This is a story that motors along at its own pace; often I was unsure exactly where it was headed.  But even then, it is utterly brilliant.  The Chelsea, no longer inhabited by Patti or Robert or even Sid and Nancy, nonetheless is home to a bevy of interesting characters, most notably one wearing angel wings.   And Hans gets to see more real people that have been hidden from him his while life; And Hans never lets go of the connection to his wife and son; he spends most of the novel unsure of how even to approach reconciliation, but it remains a green light he can always see.