Netherland

Although British attorney Joseph O'Neill has received acclaim for his nonfiction and fiction efforts in years past, his 2009 novel, Netherland, has proven his most celebrated. The story of a Dutch commodities analyst on foreign assignment to post-9/11 New York from London, Netherland won the Pen/Faulkner 2009 Award for Fiction. Netherland surely is a fine book. It grabs the reader right away with a unique, nearly surreal strangeness. Our protagonist and narrator, Hans, is left alone in the City by his wife Rachel, who takes their young son, Jake, with her when she returns to London. Hans seeks solace in a metropolitan cricket league, which is peopled almost entirely with players hailing from either the Caribbean or the Subcontinent. Hans is shortly befriended by one of the league's umpires, Chuck Ramkissoon, a Trinidadian landlord, contractor, rascal, hustler, dreamer, and small-time gangster. Chuck introduces Hans to an otherwise undiscoverable New York while the bewildered Hans ponders the nature of marriage, love, intimacy, and emotions themselves. Alas, in this most ambitious task the book meets its limits. In fact, Hans' musings on his flailing romance are interspersed rather incongruously with his Chuck Ramkissoon adventures. Nevertheless, Netherland was a fun read and a piece of literature which sticks in the mind well after the covers are closed.

Also check out O'Niell's well-regarded nonfiction book Blood-Dark Track: a Family History.

-- Steve, Main Library