Paste asked me to help pick some of the best books of the decade. I wrote the blurb for Netherland:
Anyone can write a book set in New York; many do. Few can write about a book about the immigrant experience in New York, which is of course the real story of the city—the tired, hungry, and poor; the con and the mark; the half-lit memories of home; the joy of having arrived. Netherland has been compared to The Great Gatsby, but O’Neill has more faith in the American Dream than Fitzgerald ever did, and the America that emerges at the end of his third book is wondrously, terribly alive.
December 21, 2009, 6:23pm Comments
