David Thomson

Netherland
By Joseph O’Neill
Pantheon, 256 pages, $23.95

The title of Netherland, the third novel by Irish-born Joseph O’Neill, refers not to “Neverland” or a place at the end of mist and mystery; it embraces rather the Dutch origins of New York City. The events of 9/11 plant dismay in a modern marriage, not eased by a move into the Chelsea Hotel. Rachel is inclined to go back to London with their son, while Hans, a banker, stays in the city and tries to work things out. The novel never sounds Irish, despite the yearning and unwinding strains in Mr. O’Neill’s writing. But does it really sound Dutch (the author was raised in Holland)? If not, where is the steady pull of the language coming from? This is as much of a puzzle as the city that Hans begins to discover, thanks in part to his Trinidadian friend Chuck Ramkissoon, whose great cause in life is to restore cricket to the New York area.  read more »

Standard Operating Procedure
By Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris
The Penguin Press, 286 pages, $25.95

Standard Operating Procedure—the film—is a mannered, stealthy web, the product of an artful, rather self-important yet depressed spider who sees Abu Ghraib prison as the obligingly ambivalent provocation for "an Errol Morris picture."  read more »

BEAUTIFUL CHILDREN
By Charles Bock
Random House, 432 pages, $25

There’s a lot of noise already about Charles Bock’s first novel, Beautiful Children. It was there already before I began reading. I was at liberty to go to the book’s Web site, the sheer empty-headed monotony of which at last drove me to start reading the book itself. As I advanced, I saw (in Interview magazine, its “Falling in Love With America All Over Again” special issue) that Mr. Bock’s parents owned a pawnshop in Las Vegas, which gave the kid access to all that city’s wonders. The same promo (it’s called Writer Spotlight, but it’s an ad) shows Mr. Bock as a nerdy-looking dude who can be made cool in the right lighting and the right clothes (blazer by Boss Selection, shirt by Boss Black, jeans by 7 For All Mankind). Mr. Bock stands there in the picture trying to be helpless or looking like a suspect in a police lineup. But he looks too smart to be so foolish. Surely he knows he’s been styled by James Worthington Demolet, just as he has lent himself to the notion that Beautiful Children is a buzz book instead of just a buzz.  read more »