Netherland (2008) by Joseph O'Neill

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Netherland (2008)

by Joseph O'Neill

Brooklyn/Queens/Long Island/Staten Island: 22/26 

New York: 99/103

  Netherland, Joseph O'Neill's 2008 novel about the aftermath of 9/11 and, of all things, cricket, is the only book representing Staten Island on the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America list.  That seems a trifle unfair, but it's hard to get upset considering I've never been to Staten Island and I doubt I'll ever go.  If one was looking to break down New York lit, I would propose the following time-based categories:

1.  Everything before the publication of the Great Gatsby in 1925.

2.  1925- through the end of the World War II.

3.  End of World War II to 9/11

4.   9/11 to the pandemic.

5. post-pandemic (ongoing)

 

    By this analysis, Netherland is a post-9/11 book, about a wealthy Dutch oil and gas analyst who sees his marriage to an English attorney (who is, quite, nonsensically, practicing as a US attorney after being educated in the UK- something which is, to my understanding, impossible.) fall apart after 9/11 forces the couple and their infant son to move into the Chelsea hotel while their way-downtown condo is repaired after 9/11.   Netherland also falls squarely into the category of rich people and their problems, a group I have little empathy for and no sympathy with.  I'm not, personally, a rich person, but I've been close enough to them to know that the wealthy tend to be way less interesting than one might expect and that wealth is often unearned or randomly bestowed on people who have no business being rich.  

   I did enjoy the cricket angle, and the parts about cricket, and the cricket-based community that this rich financial analyst falls into after his marriage falls apart kept my interest where his relationship with his wife did not.  If there is one character type in American fiction I can't stand it's the well to-do young mother who suddenly decides that she just can't make a go of it in her marriage, often for reasons that appear opaque and/or non-sensical to others.  I'm a feminist all the way down the line, and no huge fan of child-bearing, but personally, I feel that women in the upper echelons of the socio-economic pyramid should stick it out for the 18 or so years child rearing requires, in the absence of some actual incident of domestic abuse or abandonment.  Suck it up, lady, that is what I wanted to tell the wife in this novel.  Certainly, she doesn't do her child any favors by abandoning her husband in New York and moving back to London.