Netherland
Ratings2
Average rating2.5
15
Ratings2
Average rating2.5
In 2006, Chuck Ramkissoon is found dead in a New York canal. In London, Hans van den Broek hears the news, and remembers his unlikely friendship with Chuck and the New York in which it flourished: the New York of 9/11 and the Iraq war. Those years were difficult for Hans - his English wife Rachel left after the attack and he spent two strange years in the Chelsea Hotel, passing evenings with the eccentric residents. Lost in a country he'd regarded as his new home, Hans sought comfort in the almost invisible world of New York cricket, in which immigrants from Asia and the West Indies play on the city's most marginal parks. It was during these games that Hans befriended Chuck, who dreamed of the city's first proper cricket field. Hans grew to share Chuck's dream - until he began to glimpse the darker meaning of his new friend's activities and ambitions... [Cover].
Reviews with the most likes.
Got distracted by Terry Pratchett's Unseen Academicals. Never got the desire to go back to it.
A novel about a marriage, cricket and the aftermath of 9/11, Netherland is essentially the study of one man, set adrift in New York.
Market analyst Hans van den Broek and his lawyer wife, Rachel (whom he met and married in the UK) are living in New York with their young son when the Twin Towers are hit. Displaced and scared, Rachel, increasingly politicised, decides to move back to London, leaving a confused Hans to his own devices. Their marriage at breaking point, Hans is at a loss. By chance he stumbles across the scrappy immigrant cricket clubs that play wherever they can in New York's parks and, a player himself, he joins a club and is befriended by the fast talking “businessman” Chuck Ramkissoon.
Ramkissoon has a dream of building a proper cricket pitch and stadium in New York, of hosting international matches, of spreading the game of cricket through America. Hans falls into his orbit, joining him on mysterious car journeys, helping to mow the fledgling cricket pitch. But is Ramkissoon all he seems? Or does something darker, more violent lurk beneath the charm?
That is the mystery at the heart of Netherland, but that isn't all. This is also a very well written document of a marriage that falls apart and how two people reconnect across an ocean. O'Neill's prose is easy to read (although he seems to dislike short paragraphs with some running over a page length!) and his tale of the estranged couple is powerful and moving.
It's a good tale, well told and really, what more can you ask from a novel?
