Amazon.com ReviewAmazon Exclusive: A Q&A with Joseph O'Neill Joseph O’Neill was born in Ireland and raised in Holland. He received a law degree from Cambridge University and worked as a barrister in London. He writes regularly for The Atlantic Monthly and is the author of two previous novels, New York Times Notable Book. O'Neill received the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction for his third novel, Netherland. He lives with his family in New York City.Question: President Obama mentioned in a New York Times Magazine profile that he’s reading Netherland. How do you feel about the President reading your book?Joseph O'Neill: I'm very honored, of course.Question: How is the world of Netherland particular to the United States after 9/11? Joseph O'Neill: The story takes place in the aftermath of 9/11. One of the things it does is try to evoke the disorientation and darkness of that time, which we only emerged from with the election of President Obama.Question: What is the importance of the sport of cricket in this book? Do you play? Joseph O'Neill: I love sport and play cricket and golf myself. Sport is a wonderful way to bring together people who would otherwise have no connection to each other.Question: One of your reviewers calls Netherland an answer to Joseph O'Neill: Halfway through the book I realized with a slightly sinking feeling that the plot of Netherland was eerily reminiscent of the Gatsby plot: dreamer drowns, bystander remembers. But there are only about 5 plots in existence, so I didn't let it bother me too much. Fitzgerald thankfully steered clear of cricket.Question: Many reviewers have commented on the “voice” of this novel. How it is more a novel of voice than of plot? Do you agree with this? Joseph O'Neill: Yes, I would agree with that comment. This is not a novel of eventful twists and turns. It is more like a long-form international cricket match (which can last for 5 days without a winner emerging), about nuance and ambiguity and small slippages of insight. And about language, of course. (Photo © Lisa Acherman) From Publishers WeeklyStarred Review. Hans van den Broek, the Dutch-born narrator of O'Neill's dense, intelligent novel, observes of his friend, Chuck Ramkissoon, a self-mythologizing entrepreneur-gangster, that he never quite believed that people would sooner not have their understanding of the world blown up, even by Chuck Ramkissoon. The image of one's understanding of the world being blown up is poignant—this is Hans's fate after 9/11. He and wife Rachel abandon their downtown loft, and, soon, Rachel leaves him behind at their temporary residence, the Chelsea Hotel, taking their son, Jake, back to London. Hans, an equities analyst, is at loose ends without Rachel, and in the two years he remains Rachel-less in New York City, he gets swept up by Chuck, a Trinidadian expatriate Hans meets at a cricket match. Chuck's dream is to build a cricket stadium in Brooklyn; in the meantime, he operates as a factotum for a Russian gangster. The unlikely (and doomed from the novel's outset) friendship rises and falls in tandem with Hans's marriage, which falls and then, gradually, rises again. O'Neill (_This Is the Life_) offers an outsider's view of New York bursting with wisdom, authenticity and a sobering jolt of realism. (May) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

O'Neill, Joseph

Golden Books Publishing Company, Incorporated

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Random House, Incorporated

Vintage Books

United States, United States of America

First American Edition, PS, 2008

New York, New York State, 2008

1, 2008

librusecid_499541

<p><P><b>New York Times Book Review Best Book of the Year&#160;</b><P>In a New York City made phantasmagorical by the events of 9/11, and left alone after his English wife and son return to London, Hans van den Broek stumbles upon the vibrant New York subculture of cricket, where he revisits his lost childhood and, thanks to a friendship with a charismatic and charming Trinidadian named Chuck Ramkissoon, begins to reconnect with his life and his adopted country. As the two men share their vastly different experiences of contemporary immigrant life in America, an unforgettable portrait emerges of an "other" New York populated by immigrants and strivers of every race and nationality.</p><h3>The Barnes & Noble Review</h3><p>Joseph O Neill's <EM>Netherland</EM> is the rare fiction that is unabashed at the fact of its having been written. Hans, the pensive narrator, is a foreigner twice removed -- a Dutchman arrived in New York City by way of London -- and his voice has an outsider s relish for the stranger words and usages of English. With a keenly perceptive eye, Hans takes us through his solitary New York existence in the wake of the World Trade Center attacks: his wife has left, taking their young son back with her to England, and Hans faces sudden, stark awareness of his own isolation. A tip-off from a cab driver leads him to a largely immigrant-driven cricket scene in New York s outer boroughs, and Hans falls into an unlikely friendship with a soliloquizing Trinidadian named Chuck Ramkissoon, whose grandiose plan is to turn an unattended patch of park near JFK airport into an international cricket mecca. What follows is an awakening of sorts for Hans -- a chance for the recovery of a lost self -- and a less fortunate outcome for Chuck, whose racketeering operation introduces Hans to a seamier side of New York. While it would be easy to lump <EM>Netherland</EM> into the burgeoning school of post-9/11 fiction, its fixations have more to do with how a singular mind navigates the atomized world of the modern city (in this respect, O Neill s Irish inheritance is plainly visible). The novel is low on action and heavy on musing, but the sharpness of O Neill s reflective sensibility is more than enough to keep things moving: he packs into Hans all the revelation and despair of a man able to tunnel into his own depths. --<i>Amelia Atlas</i></p>

In a New York City made phantasmagorical by the events of 9/11, Hans--a banker originally from the Netherlands--finds himself marooned among the strange occupants of the Chelsea Hotel after his English wife and son return to London. Alone and untethered, feeling lost in the country he had come to regard as home, Hans stumbles upon the vibrant New York subculture of cricket, where he revisits his lost childhood and, thanks to a friendship with a charismatic and charming Trinidadian named Chuck Ramkissoon, begins to reconnect with his life and his adopted country. Ramkissoon, a Gatsby-like figure who is part idealist and part operator, introduces Hans to an "other" New York populated by immigrants and strivers of every race and nationality. Hans is alternately seduced and instructed by Chuck's particular brand of naivete and chutzpah--by his ability to a hold fast to a sense of American and human possibility in which Hans has come to lose faith. Netherland gives us both a flawlessly drawn picture of a little-known New York and a story of much larger, and brilliantly achieved ambition: the grand strangeness and fading promise of 21st century America from an outsider's vantage point, and the complicated relationship between the American dream and the particular dreamers. Most immediately, though, it is the story of one man--of a marriage foundering and recuperating in its mystery and ordinariness, of the shallows and depths of male friendship, of mourning and memory. Joseph O'Neill's prose, in its conscientiousness and beauty, involves us utterly in the struggle for meaning that governs any single life.From the Hardcover edition.

In a New York City made phantasmagorical by the events of 9/11, Hans -- a banker originally from the Netherlands -- finds himself marooned among the strange occupants of the Chelsea Hotel after his English wife and son return to London. Alone and untethered, feeling lost in the country he had come to regard as home, Hans stumbles upon the vibrant New York subculture of cricket, where he revisits his lost childhood and, thanks to a friendship with a charismatic and charming Trinidadian named Chuck Ramkissoon, begins to reconnect with his life and his adopted country.--From publisher description.

2015-12-26