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Netherland | 
| Author: Joseph O'neill
Publisher: Fourth Estate Ltd
Category: Book
List Price: £14.99
Buy New: £7.49
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Avg. Customer Rating:  52 reviews
Sales Rank: 190
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 5.4 x 1.1
ISBN: 0007269064
EAN: 9780007269068
ASIN: 0007269064
Publication Date: May 6, 2008
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Pre-Order (0-0 Business Days)
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| Customer Reviews: Read 47 more reviews...
 Turgid Big American allegory November 27, 2008
Even if it's not particularly long and the author is Irish, this feels a lot like a self-styled `Big American Novel' - the book is a rambling, outsiders' panorama of post-9/11 America with a symbolical narrative about (sort of) cricket. The main pull is O'Neill's highly lyrical writing style, which at times is quite evocative of John Banville - i.e. dazzlingly (self-consciously?) fancy/scholarly, and much easier to admire from a distance than feel genuine affection for.
 short and to the point November 15, 2008
Brilliant, I thought. I've left it somewhere eye-catching on a bookshelf so I can read it again. I don't do that often.
Thankfully short November 6, 2008
Netherland is incredibly evocative of what it must have been like living in New York in the period following the attacks on the World Trade Center. It also gives a strong feeling of dislocation, the sense of being an alien in a big city and of your wife and child leaving you to return to the other side of the world. This is all good stuff.
The style reminds me a little of Ballard but the great thing about Ballard is he cobines this style with a great story and big ideas. The story behind Netherland is terribly uninteresting and Hans' tedious philosophising about life doesn't really result in any insights worth bothering about.
The novel seems much longer than it is. Thankfully it is very short
A good read - an atmospheric book November 3, 2008
This is a very good read - a measured story which is better for that. It might be more of a 'man's' read than a woman's, as it does partly depend on the love of cricket, but it is also a great book on life, its meaning, and how it all fits together.
New Amsterdam October 28, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Unlike some other reviewers here, I disagree with the sentiment that this novel doesn't do what it says on the tin, so to speak. Joseph O'Neill's 'Netherland' IS exactly that: a topographic overview of a man lost in the vastness of New York City; lost amongst other fellow immigrants; lost after the breakdown of his own marriage post 9/11; and finding himself very far, far away from his homeland & the warm memories it brings back to him (hence the cover photograph).
I thoroughly enjoyed O'Neill's empathetic reading of Hans and his adventurous 2 year long "lost weekend". He desperately tries anything to pick up his life again (driving lessons, one night stands, cricket etc) and you find yourself routing for him as he shifts from one time-killer to another, in the hope that he breaks the cycle of listlessness and moves on with his life. A saviour seems to appear in the form of the mysterious Chuck Ramkissoon (an ambitious cricket-loving Trinidadian) whom he befriends but - without giving too much away - he is not as he appears to be. When Hans unravels what Chuck was really all about, he also comes to some hard-hitting conclusions about himself and he finally sees the light.
Don't be put off by the endless cricket references in some of the other reviews here on Amazon because it is far more than just a novel about a lost cricketer in New York. It is one man's listless, yet gripping, odyssey in New Amsterdam after 9/11 and O'Neill effortless lays it out in just over 250 pages. A deserved Man Booker nomination, in my opinion. One of the novels of the year.
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