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Netherland - subtle & mesmerising

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The world will never be the same for millions of New Yorkers following the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center. The population was left hurting, scared and bereft. Just walking down sixth avenue without the guiding monoliths is a disorientating experience.

Joseph O'Neill's Netherland deals with these insecurities in an original story concerning a man's relationship to cricket and with the compelling but flawed character of Chuck Ramkissoon who dreams of building a stadium for the first New York Cricket Club. More curiously, our narrator is Hans van den Broek, a Dutchman with an outsider's eye for both the ridiculous and the fantastic in New York.

O'Neill creates a mythic place of conditional relationships unable to depend on the world as it was, and a human condition that appears always out of time. I don't understand cricket but I love New York and you will love this book if you want to understand the effects of a world made disorderly through the eyes of a man who depends on cricket. It also contains some acute descriptions of the differences between NYC and London. Subtle and mesmerising.

The Damned Utd

 
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The first novel I've read by the author David Peace - and it's a belter. Fierce, uncompromising and unique (in many ways like its subject), this is a superb piece of fiction based on the true story of Brian Clough's disastrous 44 days in charge of Leeds United in 1973.

The relentless and repetitive prose style gives an insight into the workings of one of the most perspicacious minds in 1970s football. If you want to read a portrait of an unstoppable ego underpinned by human frailties in a world that now seems centuries ago, it's all here. Brilliant.

Buy this book.

Revolutionary Road

The tragic story of disenchantment and the failure of the American Dream in 1950s Connecticut, Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates still resonates today because of its themes of the pursuit of happiness, fulfilment and individuality.

Frank and April Wheeler, an apparently happy and successful couple, sleep-walk through their lives in quiet desperation until, responding to a long-dormant belief that they were destined for greater things - he a writer, she an actor - decide to move to Paris to realise their Bohemian urges.

But their suburban lives have become ensnared in the American Dream of mortgage, kids, car and the daily commute to Manhattan. They despise their neighbours who are a mirror image of themselves. It's a trap we all believe we can avoid but when Frank is confronted with a willing wife and few excuses not to escape to Europe the marriage breaks down, with April becoming the final victim.

Revolutionary Road is a brilliantly crafted yet claustrophobic novel that will ring bells of recognition in many who yearn for 'a way out' of their mundane lives. The freshness of the writing is striking (it was written in 1961). The descriptions of the torture of banality are devastating with a precision that nails the big lie of suburban life. Terrific.

Buy this book here

The Secret Scripture

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The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry tells the story of local beauty Roseanne Clear, a protestant, fighting the strictures of Catholicism, misogynism, and a vivid cast of characters in rural Sligo during the last century.

The melancholic backdrop and direct point-of-view (we read her memoirs, over her shoulder) makes for an unsettling experience as we look back over the life of the 100-year-old woman.

Barry's writing is the star of the show, however - lyrical, precise and heart-wrenching. Although much has been writen about the unsatisfactory ending to the book, when prose soars like this it hardly matters.

Buy this book here.