Netherland - Joseph O'Neill

Netherland has been billed as the first important post-9/11 novel - important enough, in fact, to be showered with accolades, important enough that it's known to be on President Obama's reading list. I have the paperback version, a slim blue volume with a tiny New York City skyline tracing the bottom front cover. The author glowers on the back beside his many blurbs, dark, large-eyed, and disapproving.

I was afraid it might be a pretentious novel; it's not that. In fact, I can honestly say I've never read another like it, and that post-9/11 flavor might be what makes it so unique. Its narrator, Hans, a temporary New Yorker via London and, originally, the Netherlands, is as sharply intelligent and observant a narrator I've experienced in a long while. He's a little too carefully urbane, a little too magnanimous, a little too assured of his own socio-economic status. It would be easy to dislike him, but there's an authenticity in his observations, and such a vulnerable sadness, that I felt drawn to him despite his unavoidable poshness.

The novel purports to be about (and I use "about" loosely) Hans' two solo years in New York while separated from his wife and son who've moved back to London and his strange, eerie relationship with Chuck Ramkissoon, a South Asian cricketer, entrepreneur, and (possible) gangster he's met through his cricket pals. Through Chuck, Hans reacquaints himself with New York in the two years following 9/11, and at first I thought O'Neill would, through Hans, provide a revealing perspective of what it's like to be of Eastern, or Asian, descent in the wildly xenophobic Bush America. And, in part, he does, though largely through Hans' political lens. Chuck Ramkissoon is, in the end, simply a fellow traveler Hans meets along the way, and I still haven't decided whether I'm refreshed or annoyed at O'Neill's utter refusal to delve too deeply into racial complexities. He seems content to let the melting pot of Hans' New York acquaintances to spread throughout the novel without fully (or truly) acknowledging its import or effect.

The novel's structure, in fact, was what impressed me most. Effortlessly non-linear, the novel glides seamlessly from Hans' two year bachelorhood in New York (commuting to London every other weekend), to flashbacks from the years before his marriage fell apart, to even earlier recollections of his childhood in The Hague and his relationship with his mother. Yet all the while, O'Neill keeps the novel moving forward towards its anti-climactic conclusion of Hans' tenure in NY and its far more satisfying resolution of Hans' fraught relationship with his wife.

It's an odd novel, providing another example of the seemingly inexhaustible postmodern ennui, although this one seems to beg more attention simply because of the solemn tones of 9/11 that toll throughout its pages. It's Hans' (and ultimately O'Neill's) detachment that makes this a hard novel to love. There is beautiful writing, to be sure, but it lacks heart, passion, or any sense of joi de vivre... and perhaps that's the point. The most beautiful, arresting writing is not centered on New York, as most critics would have us think, but focuses instead on Hans' recollections of his childhood, of his boyish love of cricket, and of his mother.

Yet even through it all, O'Neill delivers some rare gems, among them Hans' wife's reason for wanting to restart their marriage

It was not the case that I'd heroically bowled her over (my hope) or that she'd tragically decided to settle for a reliable man (my fear). She had stayed married to me, she stated... because she felt a responsibility to see me through life, and the responsibility felt like a happy one.

... I couldn't speak. My wife's words had overwhelmed me. She had put into words--indeed into reality--exactly how I felt.