Plot summary
Netherland opens on protagonist Hans van den Broek, a Dutch financial analyst living in London with his English wife Rachel, but quickly flashes back to the years Hans spent in New York City before and in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. At the beginning of the novel, Hans is preparing to return to Manhattan for the funeral of estranged friend Chuck Ramkissoon, who becomes the central figure of the novel. Chuck, a Trinidadian immigrant, guides Hans into and through the world of The Staten Island Cricket Club, most of whose members are also of West Indian or South Asian descent. Chuck is a charismatic idealist, running multiple (occasionally illegitimate) businesses, and making big, optimistic plans for the future. While Hans is swept along by Chuck’s magnetic ardor for the American dream, Rachel moves back to London under the pretense of safety for their young son and ideological indignation over the American fixation on economic oppression. Though Rachel is a markedly less likeable character than Chuck, Hans eventually, inevitably follows her back to London. He loses touch with his Trinidadian friend who is discovered, years later, simply a body, handcuffed and disposed of in the Gowanus Canal.
Publication and reviews
The writing of Netherland occupied O'Neill for seven years. When it was finished, O'Neill had great trouble in finding an agent. The book was turned down by every major US publisher, until it was accepted by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House. Chief executive Sonny Mehta was a cricket fan, and after reading Netherland, wrote a strong personal recommendation to booksellers. [2]
Netherland was published in May 2008 and was featured on the cover of the New York Times Book Review where senior editor Dwight Garner called it "the wittiest, angriest, most exacting and most desolate work of fiction we've yet had about life in New York and London after the World Trade Center fell". [3] Later that year, the book was included in the New York Times Book Review list of "10 Best Books of 2008" as chosen by the paper's editors. [4]
James Wood, writing in The New Yorker , called it "one of the most remarkable postcolonial books I have ever read". He wrote that it has been "consistently misread as a 9/11 novel, which stints what is most remarkable about it: that it is a postcolonial re-writing of The Great Gatsby ." [5] In an interview with the author published at the end of the Harper Perennial paperback edition, Joseph O'Neill remarks, "Clearly Netherland is having some sort of conversation with The Great Gatsby—saying goodbye to it perhaps, and to some of the notions associated with that wonderful book." [6]
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