Netherland

Starred review from March 3, 2008
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.

Starred review from October 27, 2008
Tony award–winner Jefferson Mays (I Am My Own Wife
) follows the lead of author O’Neill for his reading of the lauded novel about Dutchman Hans van der Broek and the unusual bond he forms with fellow cricket buff and New York dreamer extraordinaire Chuck Ramkissoon. O’Neill’s crisp, layered narrative and interest in the less-traveled byways of Brooklyn are reflected in Mays’s understated take on Hans’s narration (interestingly, he does not attempt a Dutch accent); Chuck’s light, fruity Caribbean accent; and the denser accent of Chuck’s wife. Mays is nothing if not a talented performer, and while there may be less than meets the eye to O’Neill’s celebrated work, Mays’s reading is a joy. A Pantheon hardcover (Reviews, Mar. 3).