There are very few authors who can transfer a characters emotion on to the reader. Recreate the feeling so well, that you find yourself breathing the very same atmosphere as the protagonist, Joseph O Neill has done this and much more.
We follow Hans back and forth, almost literally as the novel highlights his displacement, in New York around 9/11, his wife's home in London and his own childhood in Holland. His estrangement with his wife, the distance with his mother, his own lethargy, his feeling towards his child with an undercurrent of Chuck Ramkissoon - a friend? his boatman through the purgatory? We are never too sure.He takes Hans through immigrant New York, through shady deals and Hans discovers ethnic food, driving license horrors and of course cricket.
I am not a cricket fan, and though the prose was especially fine, I got a little bored with the descriptions. May appeal to a cricket fan. All in all, a great read for a rainy afternoon, if you have those where you come from.
6/10
We follow Hans back and forth, almost literally as the novel highlights his displacement, in New York around 9/11, his wife's home in London and his own childhood in Holland. His estrangement with his wife, the distance with his mother, his own lethargy, his feeling towards his child with an undercurrent of Chuck Ramkissoon - a friend? his boatman through the purgatory? We are never too sure.He takes Hans through immigrant New York, through shady deals and Hans discovers ethnic food, driving license horrors and of course cricket.
I am not a cricket fan, and though the prose was especially fine, I got a little bored with the descriptions. May appeal to a cricket fan. All in all, a great read for a rainy afternoon, if you have those where you come from.
6/10
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