The Square Circuit: February 2009

THE NORTHERN CLEMENCY

When I read, just now, on a book-blogger's post that Philip Hensher's THE NORTHERN CLEMENCY was "immensely long and hysterically dull," I did a bit of a double-take. At 600 pages it's long, but "immensely"? Please. And "hysterically dull" is a cute, oxymoronic little turn of phrase, and as I was telling my wife nothing really happens in the book, but to call it "hysterically dull" is a bit, um, hysterical.

The novel is a very leisurely portrait of two families in the Pittsburgh of England, the northern steel town of Sheffield. One family--the Sellers--moves up to Sheffield from London when the father is sent to run an electrical plant in the north, and their neighbors, the Glovers, are Sheffield natives. One reviewer described the families as "lower middle class," but I don't really buy that (although he probably knows the English class system better than I do); both fathers are white-collar managers. Anyway, it's one of those expansive, watch-a-group-of-people-through-their-lives-and-as-they-are-affected-by-larger-historical-events books, with several (at least 12) main characters. Nothing particularly happens in the book: none of the characters really achieve what they want to achieve, and what mostly comes out after observing these people through twenty years of history is just how un-epic most of our lives really are: we want our lives to work out in particular ways, and we have dreams, but they don't work out, and other stuff happens, and we never become all that (forgive this awful MBA word) 'impactful' in the world. But even though we aren't significant in the world, we aren't necessarily unhappy, or unfulfilled. The closest to a tragic character in the novel is Tim, youngest son of the Sheffield natives, who is cursed with a nasty personality and deep-seated obsessions. When the book opens he's consumed by his obsession with snakes, an obsession that is then transferred to Sandy, the London-turned-Sheffield neighbor. Tim later becomes a student radical, spending his days reading Marx in the public library, and we see him as a peripheral character in the Orgreave riot of the 1984 English miners' strike. In the end, he gets a Ph.D. and begins teaching at the local university, only to rekindle his obsession with Sandy (which ends farcically).

I certainly didn't find the book "hysterically dull," although nothing really does happen. I couldn't put it down, in fact. It reminded me not of DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES, as one snarky reviewer said, but of 90% of Zadie Smith--especially ON BEAUTY and WHITE TEETH without the wacky climax. And in that, I suppose, it's reminiscent of E.M. Forster, Smith's acknowledged master. The novel is incredibly British and I know that I missed a ton of references, especially to the dialect and folk customs of northern England and the subtle differences between London and Sheffield. It doesn't, though, as Updike often did, fall prey to the name-dropping as a way to establish its time--we don't hear about the character's funny period clothes or the pop music of the day to center us in time.

NETHERLAND

Sometimes, when it comes to a "serious" book about New York, it's very difficult to tell by reading America's more prominent book reviewers whether the book is actually any good. Such reviewing luminaries as the NEW YORK TIMES and NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS and the NEW YORKER (am I sensing a theme?) are based in New York, of course, and a very significant percentage of major reviewers also have chosen to live there--for obvious reasons. (It's still a hell of a book town, and used to be the center of the publishing universe.) So I've had many experiences of reading or buying a book with a New York theme that was rapturously reviewed in several publications, only to find that the book was... meh. THE EMPEROR'S CHILDREN. LUSH LIFE. Even GOTHAM. Native New Yorkers assume that their city is the most important and interesting place on earth, of course, and people who choose to move to NYC frequently do so because they believe the same thing--or they come to believe it after living there for a while. So I shouldn't be surprised if reviews of New York books get a 20% reviewer's premium. (I need to remember this if and when I write a novel.)

Joseph O'Neill's NETHERLAND came in at the top of a lot of "Best Books of the Year" lists last year, and I finally got around to reading it; or, more accurately, listening to it. (I got it off Audible (thanks Dad)). It quickly got a reputation as the great 9/11 novel, even though 9/11 happens off camera and it's really about the emotional resonances of living in post-9/11 New York. It's kind of a dual story: it's narrated by a Dutch banker (or, I suppose, a 'commodities analyst') whose English wife has decided to leave him and return to London after 9/11, clearly but never explicitly identified as the cause for her departure. Hans van den Broek, the banker, is cricket-mad, and falls in with the most interesting character in the novel, a Trinidadian hustler named Chuck Ramkissoon, who is wheeling and dealing to create a top-level cricket facility in south Brooklyn. The novel is told in a series of flashbacks from the time that van den Broek learns of the discovery of his friend Ramkissoon's body in the Gowanus Canal.

I'm not going to blame my feeling that the book was disjointed and wandering entirely on O'Neill. I did listen to it, and not only does my mind wander at times when listening but I did fall asleep--repeatedly--throughout the book. (Being read to has that effect on me.) So I might have missed some things. But I'm pretty sure that the book jumped through time constantly, which is not necessarily a fault, but van den Broek was such a boring character, such I guy that I didn't particularly care about, that the combination was bad. I felt that O'Neill really wanted to write Ramkissoon's story but felt the obligation to stick with the "marriage affected by 9/11" story. I can see why the New York critics loved it, though; it does have a magnificent feel for what they would probably call the "unknown" New York--the New York of immigrants in the outer boroughs, and the encounter of one immigrant (privileged van den Broek) with the more traditional stratum of immigrants always present in the city.

Like I said, New York critics loved the book, and it has its virtues. O'Neill knows the city and has exhumed, or exposed, the cricket scene there, which is quite original. He's also a very impressive stylist. But scanning some non-American reviews (such as this one from the GUARDIAN) I see that not everyone is as rapturous about this novel as the NEW YORKER, NEW YORK TIMES, etc. To wit: