Just read Netherland by Joseph O'Neil. Not sure exactly what all the fuss was about. The NYTBR comparing it to The Great Gatsby, the glowing blurbs on the back cover. I didn't feel it was the masterpiece everyone claimed. It wasn't terrible though. I learned a couple things about cricket and New York.
It is a post 9/11 novel apparently, although I would argue anything written after 9/11/01 is ! (This is a post 9/11 blog by the way.) He can write though and he does say some good things including the following on....you guessed it! 9/11:
“For those under the age of 45 it seemed that world events had finally contrived a meaningful test of their capacity for conscientious political thought. Many of my acquaintances, I realized, had passed the last decade or two in a state of intellectual and psychic yearning for such a moment — or, if they hadn’t, were able to quickly assemble an expert arguer’s arsenal of thrusts and statistics and ripostes and gambits and examples and salient facts and rhetorical maneuvers. I, however, was almost completely caught out.”
I guess my problem with the novel was that the action was too distant to really care about the main interesting character: the Dutch narrator Hans, whose wife and child just left him, writes about this Trinidadian dreamer and hustler Chuck Ramkissoun (sic) in new York City. Some of the observations seem a little too tacked on, as if he had some scraps of writing leftover from his diary that he thought were so wonderful that he threw them in and made Hans say them. So, not unlike Hans, it just meanders along aimlessly until then... it's over. Chuck is always too far away to really care about and Hans is not so interested in exploring his life beyond what he allows.
When Hans finally figures out what Chuck is up too besides cricket and acts all shocked and horrified you want to say "About time! What did you expect?" This is post 9/11 after all Hans!
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