So, Netherland, right? Look at the classy, prep-tastic cover.I bought it because I read it was about cricket. It's not - cricket plays a part and there is enough cricket jargon to cause head-scratching, yet not enough to make one care about cricket. So there's that.
The hero is a Dutchman living in New York during the current decade. After 9/11 his wife decamps with their son to her native England. Hans starts playing cricket a bit with some guys. Oh, shit, I'm already bored typing this. Anyway, he lives in the Chelsea hotel for no reason other than to give the blahness a splash o' color.
Look, I read the whole book and am too bored to talk any more about it. EXCEPT to say that the lead guy is very rich, so there's never any real debate as to whether he will overcome his Existential Malaise, and there are long dinner-partyesque segments making sure we know that The War in Iraq Was Wrong. In a very Ian McEwan Sunday kind of way. Annoying.
Also: one of the (lazy) blurbs on the back says something about "like The Great Gatsby, this novel blah blah--." I am hard-pressed to think of another look less Gatsby-ish. Maybe Ubik or The Thorn Birds or The Wonderful Trip to the Mushroom Planet. But otherwise, no.
Also 2: this was good - "There is a limit to what Americans understand about the English. And that limit is cricket."
Also, right after this I read Martin Amis's book of 9/11 (ish) essays, which was a rather bracing tonic to the fatuousness of Netherland. Full of things to chew over like this: more books are translated into Spanish in Spain each year than have been translated into Arabic in the last 1000 years.
The hero is a Dutchman living in New York during the current decade. After 9/11 his wife decamps with their son to her native England. Hans starts playing cricket a bit with some guys. Oh, shit, I'm already bored typing this. Anyway, he lives in the Chelsea hotel for no reason other than to give the blahness a splash o' color.
Look, I read the whole book and am too bored to talk any more about it. EXCEPT to say that the lead guy is very rich, so there's never any real debate as to whether he will overcome his Existential Malaise, and there are long dinner-partyesque segments making sure we know that The War in Iraq Was Wrong. In a very Ian McEwan Sunday kind of way. Annoying.
Also: one of the (lazy) blurbs on the back says something about "like The Great Gatsby, this novel blah blah--." I am hard-pressed to think of another look less Gatsby-ish. Maybe Ubik or The Thorn Birds or The Wonderful Trip to the Mushroom Planet. But otherwise, no.
Also 2: this was good - "There is a limit to what Americans understand about the English. And that limit is cricket."
Also, right after this I read Martin Amis's book of 9/11 (ish) essays, which was a rather bracing tonic to the fatuousness of Netherland. Full of things to chew over like this: more books are translated into Spanish in Spain each year than have been translated into Arabic in the last 1000 years.
1 comment:
Oh-my-God-that-books-sounds-so-boring-I-can't-even-read-your-whole-post.
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