Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2559 in Books
• Published on: 2009-01-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 300 pages

Review
'I'm reading this book called Netherland by Joseph O'Neil...it's fascinating. It's a wonderful book.'
--Barack Obama

Books of the Year
--Mail on Sunday

Books of the Decade 2008
--Guardian

Observer Sports
'Great cricket novels can be counted on one hand...Netherland looks as if it may top the lot!'

Telegraph
'This novel recalls Hitchcock: it is the kind of haunting book he might have made into a poignant film.'

Customer Reviews

Wish I'd bought something different
I feel almost apologetic about the fact that I never quite got "Netherland" - especially in the light of the other glowing reviews posted here. I bought it on the strength of the newspaper reviews, because it sounded like the kind of literary novel I really enjoy (Updike, Bellow etc).

But I found it really confusing. The fact that a novel about cricket has an ice-skater on the cover is perhaps a symbol of how oddly disjointed the events of the book are - and like many others writing here, I expected a bit of a mystery plot as the novel begins with a dead body - but no such luck.

I never really came to like or care about the reserved (and verging on pathetic, I sometimes wanted to scream) narrator Hans. I disliked his wife. I know it's lame and schoolgirly to talk about whether you "liked' characters but I just didn't really care what happened. And where other readers clearly found the elliptic writing and long sentences profoundly evocative, I just got muddled. The one saving grace was the subtlety of the falling-apart marriage and its strange journey back to wholeness: all in all I felt the book had the potential to be really good, but in the end I just found it slightly irritating.

Totally underwhelming!
Like many other reviewers, I read this book because of the fantastic praise it was getting and didn`t want to miss a great novel: I wouldn`t have done! Uninspiring and very dull man splits up from his family and meets a larger-than-life and actually rather unsavoury character. Some talk of setting up international cricket in New York. Nothing happens. Uninspiring and very dull man goes back to family. Er, that`s it. Yes, the writing is ok and there are one or two entertaining bits, but the total effect is severely underwhelming. I will have no difficulty waiting for Mr O`Neill`s next offering!

A demanding but worthwhile read
According to the dust jacket the critics loved it. I can see why but found it very demanding. It is not a novel in which plot plays a big part. In fact, it is more an extended meditation on experience - on love,class, fatherhood, friendship,and belonging. But the prose is breathtaking at times, and there are some sections of description and reflection which I won't forget in a hurry and which make it worthwhile in the end.