Netherland: A Novel by Joseph O'Neill
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Book Reviews of Netherland: A Novel
Book Review: Beautiful
Summary: 5 Stars
I'm amazed at the reviewers who found this book difficult to read or (horrors) actually made them look up words or reread sentences. The complexity and convolution of language (and love of cricket and its complexities and ambiguities) is actually key to the depiction of a character who is mired in indecision, an overly nuanced world view and separation between his impressions of and engagement with the world. I actually read most of this during a series of sessions on the elliptical treadmill at my local gym, with all the attendant visual noise and chattering and had no trouble whatsoever following the story and language. I look forward to rereading it in a quieter setting where I'll be able to appreaciate much that I no doubt missed the first time around. Like any great piece of writing, it rewards return and the investment of time and effort on the part of a serious reader.Book Review: The Existential New York
Summary: 5 Stars
Let me start by saying that this was a hard book to get into. I was a bit bored by the Cricket game and the characters were all quite aloof. However the relationships between the characters were what captivated me. Despite their diversity and their existential behavior, the characters somehow mixed well and wormed along together through a Big Apple that is full of rough spots and loneliness, but also full of a flavor and comraderie found no where else. It wasn't until the last 100 pages that I began to appreciate this and then I couldn't put it down. I love New York City not for its glamour and style, but for its grit, its diversity, and the existentialism of New Yorkers despite the enormity of population. This novel gave to me the New York I love in an elusive insidious way that only an author of great talent is cabable of. Not for all, but worth a shot.Book Review: A great read!
Summary: 5 Stars
Netherland is a wonderful Novel, and one does not have to know cricket to read it, in fact it may inspire some to find out more about it.
The story is heart wrenching, romantic, and adventurous.
What's funny is as an American who has recently taken up the game of cricket and had the pleasure of actually playing Staten Island Cricket Club, I found the description of Walker Park laugh out loud accurate.
Joseph O'Neill has written a book every man, woman, and cricket player will enjoy.
See Staten Island Criket club, Walker Park, and an overview of cricket On SNY's Street Games
http://www.sny.tv/media/player/mp_tpl.jsp?w=mms%3A//a1503.v222062.c22206.g.vm.akamaistream.net/7/1503/22206/v0001/mlb.download.akamai.com/22206/2007/shows/streetgames/101807_streetgames_cricket_400.wmv&type=v_free&_mp=1
Book Review: A Beautiful Novel
Summary: 5 Stars
I am a high school English teacher, and this is one of the rare books to be written in the last few years that I can definitely see appearing on someone's syllabus. For O'Neill has written a beautiful novel that holds tremendous insight into the human condition, contains amazing descriptive power, and makes poignant sense of our contemporary world. Woven throughout is the sport of cricket, which acts as a metaphor for the decline of a certain lost ideal, an ideal of hope still held in the minds of the panoply of immigrants that populate this tale, even as they see the ideal falling apart around them. Also, it's hard to put down (suspense is not a bad quality for serious fiction!). Perhaps it does take a foreign narrator to make sense of the confusion that is America. For readers of literary fiction, this novel is certainly a must read.Book Review: Literature for the 21st Century
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a book that you will stop reading to say, "Wow, do you want to hear this?" Hopefully you will have someone with whom to share dense, delicious sentences that gracefully describe the fields where cricket is played, that pull you into Trinidad's forests, and that skim you along thick, cold ice of Holland. Neverland is literature -not the stuff of reading groups. O'Neill is not an American. Brittish- schooled, he is unafraid to express his feelings without sentimentality. His characters, his confused life after 9/11 jumble inform him of the world's dirty reality. They inform the reader of the possibility there is a writer whose work is worth reading again and again.