The Dutch House

Its setting in suburban Philadelphia (near my old house) drew me to this book. But I loved it for the way Patchett unwinds the event that upends everything two siblings understand about and expect from their lives.

I’ve experienced how a single accident or illness can change the course of the future. What I recognized and connected with was this book’s portrayal of what I call the Grief Cha-Cha, two steps forward, three steps backward, and how sometimes what you grieve isn’t so much the person you’ve lost as the person that loss makes you. 

What drew me in to The Dutch House is how Ann Patchett has compassion and empathy for her characters.

Even those who made terrible or damaging decisions have a human side, and those we root for also stumble and do things we wish they hadn’t.

Maeve and Danny’s mother abandons them to serve the poor in India, and their father, Cyril, falls for a younger woman who brings two young daughters to the house and holds no love for Maeve and Danny.

We see this world through Danny’s eyes, and we feel the pain of these two kids as adults… show more.

This is a wicked stepmother, blind-sided father, devoted siblings story with a difference. Patchett rewrites “Cinderella” and “Hansel and Gretel”, with lots of dark humor (can’t help thinking of Beckett). What’s enchanting? The subtlety, nuance and almost pointillistic detail with which Patchett renders the events so quotidian, so just-down-the-street, that you understand how fairy tales are just an alternative rendering of history, or fact, or the novel. The siblings Danny Conroy and his super-super-protective sister Maeve, have an uncanny bond with each other and the family (Dutch) house to which they must return to sort out the entanglements of false… show more.

I have to say that I listened to Tom Hanks narrate The Dutch House in the audiobook version and I stand by my decision to do so as the story is told by Danny, the son, in this engaging family drama. For the record, Mr. Hanks did not disappoint. I am a huge fan when places become characters and the Dutch house in the story accomplishes this feat in spades. So much so, that I almost felt as though I’d moved in part way through the novel. At the heart of the story is family and while family doesn’t always… show more.

I’m going to put it out there right away: I’m an unabashed admirer of Ann Patchett’s writing. So much so that I don’t just read her books, I study them. The Dutch House, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, is certainly worthy of study. The story centers on two siblings, Danny and Maeve, and the lavish, titular house they grew up in outside Philadelphia. Even after Danny and Maeve are forced to leave their beloved home, the Dutch House, it, and the past itself, keep a hold on them, determining the people they become.  

P.S. I was torn between… show more.

I’ll admit, I’m a die-hard Ann Patchett fan. She could write instructions on how to run a dishwasher and I’d probably read it. The Dutch House was a Pulitzer Prize finalist and is particularly elegant. It’ll make for a great conversation about what drives some life-changing decisions, the reliability (or unreliability) of memory, and the complexity of family. Plus, the audiobook version is narrated by Tom Hanks. If that’s not enough to get people through a book, I really don’t know what is. 

Thanks to the intensity of the brother/sister relationship, the author overcomes the non-chronological style of this novel. I was intrigued by the dominance of character development as well as by the fairy tale themes—such as that of the wicked stepmother and the Hansel and Gretel-like dependence of the siblings on one another. Written in the style of a memoir told by Danny, the brother, this novel has the authenticity of a story told from inside the protagonist’s brain. Flashbacks to painful childhood memories occur in the higgeldy-piggeldy manner of memories that pop up suddenly. 

I’ve described this elsewhere as the sort of novel that makes other writers want to give up the job. It’s a beautifully crafted reconstruction of mid-to-late 20th century New York, as seen through the eyes of flawed, selfish Danny, perpetually in awe of his magnificent sister Maeve. The real ‘other time, other place’ here though, is the Dutch House of the title: a home, a history, and a battleground over which family rivalries are fought out for five decades. 

The Dutch House is a novel about assumptions, misunderstandings, loss, and the secrets that shadow the lives of the Conroy family. Following WWII, Cyril Conroy purchases the extravagant Dutch House estate for his wife and two children, a place where he imagines their perfect, privileged lives would unfold. Told through the point of view of Cyril’s son Danny, we learn of the mysterious disappearance of his mother and watch as Cyril’s subsequent marriage and blended family leaves Danny and his sister Maeve outcasts in their own home. The Dutch House itself becomes a tragic symbol, a dark and foreboding backdrop… show more.