Anyone would have felt honored as the author was when he heard his book is being read by President Obama. The story is about
the time after 9/11 attack. This entire novel is about the disorientation after 9/11 attack.
Cricket is in important part of the novel as the sports bring
people together. It explains a colored vignette of people white playing cricket on a green and decently laid grass in a village which is watched by crowd of spectators sometimes relaxing under the shade of a spreading tree.
This novel is neatly set in the beginning of the current century. Narrated in a passion of such lucidity so that the story might almost be felt like an autobiographical memoir. The story begins with the narration of three years of life in New York. Hans van den Brook is a Dutch-born financial analyst, who is at the peak of his profession, arrives with his English wife Rachel. His wife is a high-powered lawyer. 9/11 attacks made her returns to England with their son. But Hans stays back in New York with his firm thinking. At a stage, this novel is of displacement keeping in mind that they have already been relocated to London from Holland. Hero makes his future move to New York, where both he and his English wife prosper. However sadly they had to evacuate their apartment after the horrible terrorist attacks which Americans ever saw and shift to temporary quarters in the Chelsea Hotel in New York. One can now say Hans is rootless before the narration begins. With some shear luck, Hans somehow manages to stay on the fact that cricket is played in New York by not so called professional’s teams of immigrants from various parts of the world mainly Indians, Pakistanis, British and Caribbean people. Hans, who had learnt some basics of the game when he was in a school in Holland. He happens to be the only white member of the team made up by small businessmen, taxi-drivers and store-keepers. They offered Hans a kind of position that he could not find being with his professional colleagues.
Even though cricket is a symbolic presence, it has a relatively minor part during the entire course of the novel, and moreover there is no necessity for the reader to know about cricket. In the beginning of the novel cricket is considered as a symbol of the immigrants, where both couple people together and helps to distinguish their differences from the Native Americans. Hans is a successful Wall Street banker. He might be a perfect fit in New York society.
Netherland is not only the novel of ideas. It also involves an emotional love story. Marriage of Hans seems to be more of one way traffic when Rachel moves to England trying to escape from Hans rather avoiding physical damages of attacks. In between Hans flies to London to see his son. Even there the relation with his wife is somewhat painful. This seems to be an end as they later get together and dwell a normal life. Author gives a happy end to the story like someone saying they lived happily ever after.
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