Joseph O'Neill's much-talked-about new novel is called Netherland and is partially about the game of cricket. It's been getting great reviews, except in England and the L.A. Times! (Fierce literary critic James Wood called it "one of the most remarkable post-colonial books I have ever read," in the New Yorker.) However, we found the following passage—about a trip on the London Eye—a trifle confusing. Perhaps you can help make heads or tails of it:

"A self-evident and prefabricated symbolism attaches itself to this slow climb to the zenith, and we are not so foolishly ironical, or confident, as to miss the opportunity to glimpse significantly into the eyes of the other and share the thought that occurs to all at this summit, which is, of course, that they have made it thus far, to a point where they can see horizons previously unseen, and the old earth reveals itself newly."