The following podcast contains explicit language.

Hello and welcome to the Slate Audio Book Club.

I'm Megan O'Rourke, Slate's Culture Critic.

Joining me today are Stephen Metcalf Slate's Critic at Large and Katie Roifie, a Slate's Culture Critic. Joining me today are Stephen Metcalf, Slate's Critic

at Large, and Katie Roifie, a slate contributor and NYU professor. Today we're discussing

Joseph O'Neill's Netherlands, a story about a couple whose marriage deteriorates in the aftermath

of 9-11. When 9-11 happens, they are living in downtown Manhattan. They have emigrated from England where Hans

von der Brook, who is a Dutch-born equities analyst and Rachel, his wife, have met. And she's a

corporate lawyer, right? And they come to America and they're raising their son and 9-11 takes place.

And the book is kind of a phantasia, weird, desolate, strange, bleak investigation of those years and months after 9-11 when the whole world began to look slightly alien.

And in their case, their marriage began to look slightly alien to

themselves. And Rachel ends up departing to England, leaving Hans alone. So it's really the story

of Hans's life alone in the United States. And just to start us off, I wanted to talk about,

you know, is there a way in which this is a post-9-11 novel? Is that even a useful category to have? In the New York Times

book review, Dwight Garner noted that in a way, all novels are post-9-11 novels right now. But just to

throw that question out there. Well, I think in a way, the category is somewhat useless, as

Dwight points out. But I also think this is the first novel I've read.

And we've talked about Emperor's Children in this book club where at least some of us felt like the end was tacked on.

The 9-11 part was a little artificial and forced.

Here is, this is the first novel where I really felt his use of 9-11 and his way of integrating the city and the mood of the city was perfectly entwined with the mood of the declining marriage, and that he uses this larger world collapse to reflect in this kind of incredibly graceful way, the psychological reality of the characters.

Yeah, I mean, I would also say

that I think Dwight was being clever and then being clever, he sort of emptied out the category of any meaning, but I think we can re-infuse it with some meaning. I think this is very self-consciously a post-9-11 novel in a way that other novels wouldn't be. It's not precious in the least, I think we can all come out and say

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