|
|
Netherland
Joseph O'Neill
|
|
|
Well, I read it initially because I had seen it on a bookshelf, and there was some little blurb written by someone else who'd read the book who praised it, and I think I'd seen also a review perhaps in The New Yorker that praised it as well.
The backdrop of the story is post-9/11. The basic story is that there is a man, a married man, married with a child, who is from The Netherlands, who was in New York when 9/11 took place. Neither he nor his wife or child were directly injured or hurt by it but were certainly traumatized by it. So there's an immediate effect on the relationship, where his wife, feeling very uncertain and very frightened, decides to move back to England, where she is from, with her son, and he chooses to stay in America and try to live his life here. He befriends a Gatsbyesque kind of character, and older man, a wealthier man, a man who has some criminal connections, so there's sort of like a second layer of the plot, which is this friendship that springs up between the two of them. Part of the core of that friendship is that they play cricket, a game that I still don't understand very well, but it plays a central role in this story.
The writing was just glorious. It was just beautiful, beautiful writing, which is always what carries me through any kind of a story. It was also something very different. I knew nothing about cricket; I enjoyed learning about cricket. And so what you see in it is not a book the addresses some of the immediate ramifications of 9/11 but seeing maybe the more psychological or emotional effects of that tragedy and how essentially ordinary people try to move on with their lives. I think it was one of the finest books I've read in the past year. I would imagine it's going to be, you know, mentioned for many prizes. I would recommend it for anyone. I think it has a wonderful, kind of broad appeal. It's an engaging story; it's a very interested narrator.
I would give it a five. I think it's an outstanding, outstanding book.
|
|
RSS feed |
FAQ |
Book buyback home |
Sell your books |
Contact Us
