The Dutch House (Harper), Ann Patchett’s masterful eighth novel, is a fierce, intimate, and unstoppably readable saga of family life. "The problem, I wanted to say, was that I was asleep to the world. I’ve read a few books from Patchett in the past and really enjoy her writing. The Dutch House by Ann Patchett, her most recent novel, was released on September 24. Whenever Danny returns to Pennsylvania to visit Maeve, the two park across the street from their former home to mull over what happened to them: "like swallows, like salmon, we were the helpless captives of our migratory patterns. ", On one of these visits Danny asks, "Do you think it's possible to ever see the past as it actually was?" The Dutch House by Ann Patchett was the first book I ticked off my list in 2020. Cyril introduces a young widow called Andrea and her two daughters to the Dutch House, and the fragile equilibrium of this kingdom is destroyed. Because Danny is by design a clueless, tight-lipped character, it isn't clear that this was the right choice; an omniscient third person narration might have been a better way to get deeper inside him. Like art, healing is not for everyone. Cyril is revealed as weak and neglectful, a man who never really liked children, even his own. Two siblings, Maeve and Danny Conroy, bond tightly after their mother leaves home when they're 10 and 3. Home is the eponymous Dutch House, a 1922 mansion outside Philadelphia that their father, Cyril, a real estate mogul, bought fully furnished in an estate sale as a surprise for his wife in 1946, when Maeve was 5. Follow. We know what happens next: once their stepmother has taken possession, Maeve and Danny will be systematically pushed out. Like memory, Danny's narrative jumps around in time, fast-forwarding to medical school, which he attends only on Maeve's insistence, and his marriage, to which Maeve objects. The Dutch House is also about obsessive nostalgia. Their expulsion from paradise becomes quite literal a few years later; in classic fairy tale fashion, Cyril is putty in his second wife's hands. The Dutch House book. For years after they are banished from the Dutch House, Maeve and Danny make a ritual of parking outside their former home to watch the comings and goings of Andrea and their stepsisters through its vast windows. Stalwart and sceptical housekeeper? Free … (less) flag "But we overlay the present onto the past," Danny objects, a statement that highlights the trickiness of retrospective personal histories, including the one we're reading. It’s a rare Patchett novel that ends without the slightest glimmer of redemption, and here the major players virtually all – as in a story by James – arrive at final positions that involve an ironic inversion of where they started. Rare among Patchett's fiction, The Dutch House is written in the first person, from Danny's adult point of view. The Dutch House belongs to a tradition in both fairy tales and American fiction of motherless children (sometimes raised by their father, often with the aid of an aunt or trusty hired help) — books that include Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird and Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The windows both took in the sun and reflected it back against the wide lawn.”. As the layers of the past are rolled away, the shocks keep coming. The Dutch House by Ann Patchett is published by Bloomsbury (RRP £18.99) To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. There are other, more subtle literary templates underpinning the book. The best-selling author on totally rewriting her new book, being mad at her neighbors and the inaccuracy of memories. The house, built by a Dutch couple who made their fortune in cigarettes, is grand, with an ornate dining room ceiling, six bedrooms on the second floor, and a ballroom on the third floor. The important thing is that the Dutch House in the book conjures up that feeling. His wife, Elna, hates it, aesthetically and ethically. The other characters don’t get off lightly either. Their father, in the way of 1940s fathers and fairytale kings, is too busy ruling his empire to oversee their care. Danny adds later, "We had made a fetish out of our misfortune, fallen in love with it. Having carried out his sister’s revenge against their stepmother by qualifying as a doctor, he refuses to practise medicine. The Dutch House by Ann Patchett is published by Bloomsbury (RRP £18.99) To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. James said that the house of fiction has “not one window, but a million”, depending on who is looking at the scene, and Patchett’s elegantly constructed narrative often reads like a dramatisation of this idea. Check. Elna’s disintegration, in all its flamboyant pathos and ascetic self-denial, is brilliantly handled. Save The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett. Maeve insists she does just that. The Dutch House goes unabashedly sentimental, but chances are, you won't want to put down this engrossing, warmhearted book even after you've read the last page. I kissed John Updike as he presented me with an award’. The Dutch House is, in part, about real estate lust. In spite of her frailty, she is a truly monstrous creation, dispensing charity with the ruthless impartiality of a saint, offering her love and presence to all except her own family. It begins in the late 1940s, when Cyril Conroy surprises his wife, Elna, with a glass mansion in the posh Philadelphia neighborhood of Elkins Park.