my take: Under the category of “expectations are everything”… we picked this book for Book Chicks based on my mother’s raving about how great it was. I overheard her discussing it with hubby and talking about how like The Great Gatsby it was … unfortunately I hadn’t read Gatsby for a while and I hadn’t read Netherland yet, so I didn’t really pay attention, just tucked the information away.

So we read Gatsby and then we read Netherland. I spent the entire novel trying to see any similarity. Like banging my head against a wall. Which made the novel frustrating. (I did, however, learn a lot about cricket.) Reading the reviews on the back of the book, it would seem I missed a lot. And a glance at the front cover … “echoes of The Great Gatsby.” ugh!

My recommendation? enjoy this post-911 New York City novel for what it is … a treatise on the epigraph:

I dream’d in a dream, I saw a city invincible to the attacks of the whole of the rest of the earth;

I dream’d that was the new City of Friends  – Whitman

See new parts of NYC and enjoy them through the eyes and lives of these international characters.

my source: My mother so highly recommended

my verdict: Hmmm. in the right frame of mind, yes.