UK cover
Joseph O’Neil
Published by Fourth Estate 2008
Reviewed by
Steve Cowton (The White Rose Forum bibliophile)
The great and noble game of cricket has not been well served in works of fiction; it features briefly in Dickens’ “The Pickwick Papers” and crops up occasionally in the works of PG Wodehouse and the Peter Wimsey novels of Dorothy L Sayers. More recently, it is satirised in an episode of Douglas Adams’ “Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” where the inhabitants of the planet Krikkit are shocked by the theft of the mysterious “Ashes” by an evil band of robots. The cricket of popular literature is a middle class game of public schoolboys and white trousered buffoons.
This new novel is therefore to be welcomed as one of the first major works of contemporary fiction to draw heavily upon the game. The author was born in Ireland and raised in Holland. Having lived in London and spent ten years working as a lawyer he now lives in New York. Somewhere along the way, he has clearly developed a love and understanding of the game of cricket, and more importantly an appreciation of the deeper aesthetic and cultural significance of the game.
But it would be wrong to say that this is a book about cricket. This is a novel about the collapse of a marriage, set against the backdrop of New York in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in 2001. The central character is a prosperous Dutch Banker called Hans van Der Broek who finds his life devastated by the ongoing fallout from the atrocity, forced to leave his badly damaged apartment building he finds himself living in the seedy and bohemian Chelsea Hotel. His English wife suffers from the uncertainty and pervading sense of despair, and decides to return to London, taking the couple’s young son with them.
Hans is left very much alone. His career is successful, but surrounded by the empty ambition of his colleagues and the strange eccentrics who live in his hotel, he seeks company among the strange underclasses of New York. The title of the book is a reference not only to the Country of the character’s birth – and the author’s upbringing – but also to the strange twilight World of immigrants attracted to New York by the ongoing allure of the American Dream – no matter how tarnished by the events of 9/11.
Driving through the City he sees a game of cricket taking place in a park. Having played the game in London, he joins one of the many teams and soon finds his weekends occupied by various fixtures taking place in parks and on rough ground across the City and the State. He is the only white player in any of the teams – emphasising his sense of isolation and dislocation from the City around him. His team mates are mostly Asian or West Indian and we get a fascinating picture of life among the unseen itinerant population of New York.
He is drawn to one great character who becomes his friend; Chuck Ramkissoon is a native Trinidadian with a wealth of anecdotes and pitchside philosophy. He is a man with enormous dreams and huge ambition – but in reality is little more than a small-time opportunist and petty criminal. He undertakes to coach Hans for the Driving Test he must pass to gain his American Driving licence, but in reality their days spent driving across the City are merely an excuse for Chuck to collect his various gambling debts.
Chuck remains an idealist. His grand scheme is the New York Cricket Club – a club that would rival any cricket stadium in the World and present matches between the World’s top sides. This is not as far-fetched as it may sound – there are hundreds of thousands of cricket-mad immigrants in the City – and the TV Networks would guarantee any income. There is nothing more bizarre about a Test match between India and Pakistan taking place in New York – than a similar fixture taking place in Sharjah for instance.
Ramkissoon has a deep understanding of what cricket means to people – it’s civilising influence and it’s strange and unique cultural position.
“I’m saying that people, all people, Americans, whoever, are at their most civilised when they’re playing cricket. What’s the first thing that happens when Pakistan and India make peace? They play a cricket match. Cricket is instructive – it has a moral angle. I really believe this. Everybody who plays the game benefits from it. So I say, why not Americans? … Americans cannot really see the World. They think they can but they can’t. Look at the problems we’re having. It’s a mess and it’s going to get worse. I say, we want to have something in common with Hindus and Muslims? Chuck Ramkissoon is going to make it happen. With the New York Cricket Club we could start a whole new chapter in US History. Why not?”
Chuck’s lofty ideals come to nothing, and his naive idealism is punctured by the harsh reality of the life he leads. But through the game, and the friendships he makes, Hans slowly finds the old values which were important to him before 9/11. In the rigid programme of fixtures and the rules of the game, he is able to rediscover the structure that his life – and the modern World - seemed to be lacking. He rediscovers empathy with his fellow players, and slowly begins to appreciate the small pleasures that make life worth living. In one of the book’s many wonderful metaphors, he realises that the majestic cover drives which served him so well on England’s lush pitches will not work on New York’s rough municipal surfaces. He learns to loft the ball and soon finds himself scoring as freely as his team mates. The rules remain the same, but he has to adapt his natural game to make it more effective in his new surroundings.
Joseph O’Neil is clearly a great cricket lover. His descriptions of the games are beautifully vivid, but he also manages to capture the wider social side of the game – waiting for a lift, the shared tea and the disappointment of a weather-ruined fixture. From a purely cricketing point of view, it’s a fascinating picture of the game in a part of the World where I - for one - didn’t even know it was played, and I gather that this whole part of the book is based very much on fact.
This is a beautifully written novel which has much to say about the World in which we live, and I have no hesitation in recommending it most strongly to anyone who enjoys interesting and thought provoking literature. It has little humour and certainly won’t appeal to everyone. I’m afraid that those who are seeking a truly great novel about cricket will be obliged to wait a little longer.
Dedicated to Bill Gregory.
A man with a love of words and an understanding of the power and beauty of language.
