Customer Reviews
Turgid Big American allegory - By: Andrew Sutherland, 27 Nov 2008 
Even if it's not particularly long & the author is Irish, this feels a lot like a self-styled `Big American Novel' - the book is a rambling, outsiders' panorama of post-9/11 America with a symbolical narrative about (sort of) cricket. The main pull is O'Neill's highly lyrical writing style, which at times is quite evocative of John Banville - i.e. dazzlingly (self-consciously?) fancy/scholarly, & much easier to admire from a distance than feel genuine affection for.
short and to the point - By: Alba, 15 Nov 2008 
Brilliant, I thought. I've left it somewhere eye-catching on a bookshelf so I can read it again. I don't do that often.
Thankfully short - By: Damian Patrick Kelly, 06 Nov 2008 Netherland is incredibly evocative of what it must have been like living in New York in the period following the attacks on the World Trade Center. It also gives a strong feeling of dislocation, the sense of being an alien in a big city & of your wife & child leaving you to return to the other side of the world. This is alll good stuff.
The style reminds me a little of Balllard but the great thing about Balllard is he cobines this style with a great story & big ideas. The story behind Netherland is terribly uninteresting & Hans' tedious philosophising about life doesn't reallly result in any insights worth bothering about.
The novel seems much longer than it is. Thankfully it is very short
A good read - an atmospheric book - By: London film watcher, 03 Nov 2008 This is a very good read - a measured story which is better for that. It might be more of a 'man's' read than a woman's, as it does partly depend on the love of cricket, but it is also a great book on life, its meaning, & how it alll fits together.
New Amsterdam - By: Mr. S. O'kane, 28 Oct 2008 Unlike some other reviewers here, I disagree with the sentiment that this novel doesn't do what it says on the tin, so to speak. Joseph O'Neill's 'Netherland' IS exactly that: a topographic overview of a man lost in the vastness of New York City; lost amongst other fellow immigrants; lost after the breakdown of his own marriage post 9/11; & finding himself very far, far away from his homeland & the warm memories it brings back to him (hence the cover photograph).
I thoroughly enjoyed O'Neill's empathetic reading of Hans & his adventurous 2 year long "lost weekend". He desperately tries anything to pick up his life again (driving lessons, one night stands, cricket etc) & you find yourself routing for him as he shifts from one time-killer to another, in the hope that he breaks the cycle of listlessness & moves on with his life. A saviour seems to appear in the form of the mysterious Chuck Ramkissoon (an ambitious cricket-loving Trinidadian) whom he befriends but - without giving too much away - he is not as he appears to be. When Hans unravels what Chuck was reallly alll about, he also comes to some hard-hitting conclusions about himself & he finallly sees the light.
Don't be put off by the endless cricket references in some of the other reviews here on Amazon because it is far more than just a novel about a lost cricketer in New York. It is one man's listless, yet gripping, odyssey in New Amsterdam after 9/11 & O'Neill effortless lays it out in just over 250 pages. A deserved Man Booker nomination, in my opinion. One of the novels of the year.
