A number of themes run through this novel, any one of which a reader may find the most central. There is the American immigrant experience, both from the insider's and the outsider's point of view. Hans, who narrates the book, is the Dutch securities analyst who earns a fortune in the financial world. Chuck Ramkissoon is the black Trinidadian businessman who, in contrast to Hans, has to expend a great deal of effort to find the classic American Dream. New York City is where this unlikely pair can become friends, and where a man like Chuck can dream big and exercise a New Yorker's privilege, "holding yourself out in a way that, back home, would be taken as a misrepresentation."

There is the theme of post-9/11 New York, a place and time in which a city was knocked off balance, jarred out of its routine, and whose residents, for a time, at least, found a new way of interacting with each other. Many felt a bond with the city and their fellow New Yorkers that was new and even exhilarating as everyone looked out for each other, and empathy flourished. "I think for many of us it was one of the happiest times of our life", comments Chuck.

There is, as well, the theme of disappointment with a marriage, the inadequacies of love, but the ultimate salvaging of such relationships. Hans's marriage is the greater focus; his wife, Rachel, leaves him for London with their young son after a period of growing apart, after "cultivating a dutiful domesticity and maternal ethic that armored her in blamelessness, leaving me with no way to approach her, now way to find fault or feelings, waiting for me to lose heart, to put away my most human wants and expectations, to carry my burdens secretly... it was too great a disappointment, far better to get on with the chores, with the baby, with the work, far better to leave me to my own devices, as they say, to leave me to resign myself to certain motifs, to leave me to disappear guiltily into a hole of my own digging."

It is a brutal and painful portriat of a fading marriage, but O'Neill offers the hope of resurrection by bringing Rachel and Hans back together, they having decided that it seems right to be together, and not a bad thing to be so, Rachel realizing that she "felt a responsibility to see me through life, and the responsibility felt like a happy one", and Hans feeling the same.

Chuck finds another way deal with a staid marriage, taking a mistress so as to have a relationship of excitement, explaining to Hans his view of women, "After a certain point, their agenda changes. It's all about kids and housekeeping and what have you... We're the romantic sex, you know."

The reader is told from the beginning of the novel what its end will be, Hans and Rachel finding reconciliation and living in London, Chuck meeting a violent end brought about by having a finger in some unnamed, unsavory business activity. The novel is an erudite, at times too erudite at the expense of story, journey to that final point. ( )

surprisingly excellent writing. Avoids the usually cliches about immigrants. ( )

This book is about a few things: New York City, immigrant communities, marriage, and cricket. The main character, Hans, is a bland kind of guy, but he's a good narrator. He moves backwards and forwards in time as he tells the story in a very cool and seamless way--the way, I think, that a lot of people actually tell long stories.

The review I read in the NYT made me think this was going to be about post-9/11 life in New York City, but that's not really what I took away from it. If anything, Hans made me think about the loneliness of being in a foreign city. He has no close friends, a troubled marriage, a detached way of looking at himself and the world. And then he gets drawn into this cricket community and ends up spending a lot of time with this mysterious Trinidadian businessman named Chuck Ramkissoon. When people compare this book to The Great Gatsby, they must be thinking of Chuck as Gatsby, which would make Hans Nick. If I were in college that is totally what I'd write my paper about.

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Based on the rave review in The New York Times I expected to enjoy this book a lot more than I actually did. There were some excellent, not to mention beautiful, observations on the immigrant experience in New York City and some really excellent insights into the minds of New Yorkers after the attacks of 9/11. But overall I just found myself uninterested in most of the things the main character had to say about himself and his whole outlook on life. ( )

3.5 stars. Love the outer borough details and the Dutch connection. Never that interested in the narrator's emotional life and marital ins and outs. ( )