by Joseph O'Neill
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
Reviewed by Siri Hustvedt
In Joseph O'Neill's third novel, Netherland, there are two great love objects: the city of New York and the game of cricket. Hans van den Broek, the novel's Dutch narrator, seeks solace in both the place and the sport after September 11, 2001, when he finds himself adrift in the city. We know he watched the destruction on television in the midtown office where he works, that the trauma that followed is the ostensible reason for his foundering marriage, and that the catastrophe forced him, his wife, Rachel, and young son, Jake, out of their Tribeca loft and into the Hotel Chelsea. When Rachel leaves for London with Jake, Hans slides into a state of depressed alienation, which is relieved, in part, by playing cricket in the city's outer boroughs with like-minded comrades from the West Indies and Asia.
