I don't know why I do this, since reactions to fiction are so much a matter of individual taste: the book either does it for you or it doesn't; if it doesn't you move on. Also, it's much more life-improving to praise a novel than to slam it. But what the hell, there is enough praising of books on this site, and when something has been hyped to the extent that Netherland by Joseph O'Neill has, somebody ought to put in a restraining word. That somebody, today, is me.
What a nothing book. Others, so the cover will tell you, have said 'wonderful', 'stunning', 'breathtaking', 'a brilliant, haunting novel', 'exquisitely written'; and there's more of the same inside - like 'dazzling', 'mesmerising', 'truly brilliant', and even 'sensitive and intelligent'. Do not believe this. Netherland is dull, dull, dull. It is mind-killingly dull. This is despite the fact that the author knows a fair bit about cricket and has some good passages on it; and despite the fact that much of the action takes place in New York, and those who know that great city better than I do seem to think it's good about New York.
However, it lacks two things: characters who are sufficiently well-formed to engage the reader's interest; and, above all, a plot to do the same. Hans is a mooning-about guy with a marriage in trouble and not much to latch on to in terms of inner complexity; and Rachel, his wife, is so ill put together, so unsympathetically drawn, that it's hard to see why he is afflicted. But he moons about over things for most of the time and that's one source of trouble. He doesn't do so in a way that reaches your heart - or at any rate mine. Much weight, or perhaps it's novelistic 'colour', is evidently meant to rest upon the figure of Chuck Ramkissoon, but it doesn't rest there successfully, it falls headlong and away, because Chuck ain't that interesting in a true-life sense; he seems just like a character created to show you what a wild old milieu Hans has got himself into.
Plotwise, there's... nothing. Hans mooning about, with long, snooze-making descriptive passages thrown in, to accompany his doing that. And the murder mystery element surrounding Chuck Ramkissoon (don't worry I'm not giving anything away that the book itself doesn't from the off) is no mystery in the relevant fiction-reader sense. Chuck turns up dead and you never find out why, or by whom he is killed. For this and the mooning about the critics are mostly in ecstasy; but for my money the cricketing interest doesn't redeem any of it.
Think twice before you buy Netherland. Borrow a friend's copy instead, and request their permission to throw it away.