‘X’ is in ‘the Situation’: Joseph O’Neill, author of the clever and superb Netherland, hereby lets us know that his new novel is a riff on Kafka’s The Castle. Kafka’s ‘K’ has become X, struggling for recognition by his lover, by his employer, by the world.
The Situation is a residential block in Dubai (desert sand for Kafka’s snow). X is a corporate lawyer who has been invited there by an old college friend, a dodgy Lebanese billionaire, to handle the family’s personal financial affairs. The burdens of this job constitute the first of the three threads that bind the novel together.
The second is the story of X’s relationship and break up with his high-powered girlfriend, Jenn, of whom he is terrified. She is one of the reasons he has fled New York.
The third is the matter of Ted Wilson, a legendary diver, who has gone missing. X’s obsession with the diver suggests envy. For X, diving offers ‘the effect of limiting what might be termed the biographical import of life’. For an existential angst has contributed to X’s need to escape the real world and relocate in the fata morgana of Dubai: ‘The accumulation of experience amounts simply to extra weight.’
X is morally fastidious, but there is something decidedly creepy about his stalking of the Situation’s service staff in order to force on them generous tips. He is by turns suspicious, cautious, guilt-ridden, opportunistic, flip (he loves to refer us to scenes in movies: Butch Cassidy, Lawrence of Arabia, Dumb and Dumber) and although intelligent, he is unattractive, not least because he doesn’t seem to like or indeed know himself. He describes himself as ‘happy-go-lucky’; he is anything but.
The reason we stay with him is that, as in Kafka, the satire is often absurdly funny.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in