Globe Corner Blogs

Netherland - by Joseph O'Neill

So, apparently President Obama is reading Netherland. This is great news for Joseph O’Neill, the novel’s author.

Netherland, just out in paperback, was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize and, much to my surprise, cut from the short list.  It was also one of the New York Times 10 Best Books of 2008.

When I told a friend I was reading Netherland, he responded by asking if it was a book set “back in the day.” It’s not, but it was a fair question. The title is enigmatic and elusive: Netherland refers to the protagonist’s birth country (the Netherlands) and to the primary setting of the novel, New York City, once called New Amsterdam (“back in the day” of course). And going further, the title, read as nether-land, evokes images of some sort of underworld, a hidden realm that exists below the surface of the what’s most apparently visible, a nether world I understand to be the psyche of New Yorkers living in a post 9/11 world and struggling to make sense of life in a city that is often too immense, too overwhelming. Continue Reading »

Lonely Planet Bangladesh

Late one night last fall, in a packed cab, I sat up in the front seat with the driver. I was the designated directions-giver. At a stoplight our driver sighed, setting his hand heavily on the CVS bags sitting between us.
“You look tired. Are you okay?” I asked, a bit concerned for him, a lot concerned for me and the other passengers.
“Yes, very,” he answered with a heavy accent. I guessed he was from somewhere in India. “My wife is pregnant.”
“Ooh.” I answered in some contrived, childless understanding.
He continued, seemingly eager to explain himself. Were other fares not as chatty as me? Didn’t he eat at diners and kvetch with the other cabbies like in Taxi Driver? “She is in Bangladesh. She’s due September 28th, and I leave to go there soon.”

This silenced the crowd. None of us knew what to say, especially when we learned his wife was just short of earning a degree there when she got pregnant and had to stop her studies. We listened only to air rushing through the windows for several blocks.
“If you turn right here you’ll bypass Davis. It’s a shortcut.”
I tried hard to remember where Bangladesh was in relation to India. East? I looked it up when I got home: east.

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