A genius friend reccommended this novel to me, saying it made up for all the bad books that were published this year in America.

Netherland concerns the New York sojurn of Hans van den Broek, a securities analyst. Dutch born, with an English mother, Hans is sent to the New York office. His wife leaves with his son after 9/11, and Hans, lonely but ensconsed in the very entertaining Chelsea Hotel, becomes involved in a cricket league. Most of the other cricketers are from British colonies-- Trinidad, Bermuda, India, etc. He's the only white face in the game, but if anything, it makes him something of a mascot for the others.

The novel intertwines the story of Hans' estrangement from and reconciliation with his wife with the story of his freindship with Chuck Ramkissoon, a fellow cricketer-- in fact, an entreprenurial enthusiast who aims to make cricket a major American sport. The novel is retrospective-- at the beginning, Hans finds out that Chuck's corpse has been found at the bottom of the Gowanus Canal. One almost thinks it might end up being a murder mystery. But O'Neill's not concerned with the particulars of Chuck's demise-- it's the weird frissions in a freindship between a colonial administrator and a colonial subject that interests him here.

Chuck and Hans spend a lot of time together, but there's also a constant hint of mutual manipulation going on. While Hans' wife is shocked to learn of his freindship with someone like Chuck-- who, as a rags-to-riches hustler, has made some unsavory choices along the way-- Hans seems to understand these choices. And in the end, it's Chuck's wise advice that allowed Hans to patch up his marriage.

Along the way, the novel illuminates the thousand odd crannies left between the lies of empire and the the profligate truth of the irrepressible human spirit. The prose is delectable, and the contrast between a loyal, if alienated, servant of empire, and the climbing subject who seeks his promised piece of the imperial pie could perhaps be somehow encouraging or illuminating to humanist holdouts.