The Dutch House

This is a quiet, moving, utterly absorbing story of a brother and a sister. When they were young, they lived in a ridiculous house, a beautiful house, a fairy tale house--the Dutch House. And their mother abandoned them. There is an evil stepmother, as well, and when Danny is older, he and his sister are exiled from the Dutch House. Danny, the brother, narrates the story and was too young to really remember his mother. He never really understands why she left, but he has his older sister instead. It is still that most unforgivable crime for women to commit: abandoning their children. Never mind that men do it all the time, as Danny and Maeve's father did, in a sense--yet Danny grows up angry at his mother and wanting to be his father. show more It takes him a whole lifetime to figure this stuff out--and I'm not sure he ever really does, completely--but in the meantime, he tells the story of his sister, and ultimately of his mother and his daughter and the other women who noiselessly and without fanfare, almost without him noticing, shaped his life. The end, for me, was perfect and moving. Life is a wheel. show less

Well, this turned out to be beautiful. There were a couple things that kept this from the heights of Commonwealth and Tom Lake, the top Patchett books in my estimation, but it was still often incandescent.

I loved this story of a family and a family home, about how the things that happened within its walls rippled out. Thank goodness I was not a mid-century housewife with their limited options and repressed philosophies and intellect. That Patchett told their story and built it around a man (or to some extent two men) made perfect sense here. I wish Patchett had applied a more gentle hand in creating the evil stepmother character. There is a place for that character to illustrate gender disparity. Jane Austen was a master of that. In P&P show more Mrs. Bennett was ridiculous and shrill, but she was also a woman terrified, dependent upon an older husband with no ability to protect herself from utter ruin as she aged other than for her daughters to be in a position to care for her. Catherine deBourgh did not have the option of displaying quiet authority, she could only be heard when ridiculously imperious. Here the same can be said of stepmother Andrea, a beautiful young divorcee (or widow? I don't recall it being discussed) with two girls to raise in a world where a single mother had few options but to find a man to take her on with her brood, and in Mr. Conroy she hit the mother lode (or maybe the daddy lode.) I understood her fear and her flag-planting, but then Patchett took it too far. Andrea ends up doing several things with no real reason that were cruel and comically avaricious. This is central to everything that happens after so it brought down the room a bit for me. It takes this to a 4.5, and I am going to round it down to a 4. I might have rounded up for other authors, but Patchett is so great when she is great that I feel the need to dock this since I think it would have soared so much higher if the stepmother character had been written with even a shred of empathy or at least some nuance. It is unfair, but as Patchett makes clear in all of her books, fairness doesn't really have a place in most life events. (Patchett also has a sunniness, so the most painful, unfair and cruel happenings are generally steps to happy endings.)

I listened to this read by Tom Hanks, who is the perfect person to be Danny. I am sure I would have liked it in print, but as with Tom Lake narrated by Meryl Streep, I am glad I listened and think it made everything even better. show less

(62) The other two I have read by this author - 'The Magician's Assistant,' and 'Commonwealth' were decent but not fabulous -- however, I saw there was a lot of hype about Patchett's Pulitzer-nominated newest work so I got in the queue for a library loan - and I am so glad I did. This is a lovely story about an odd family that lives in a glass house, bought part and parcel at auction by a remote father. Mr. Conroy raises his two children alone as his wife mysteriously abandoned them with the youngest boy was just an infant. Everything revolves around the eponymous 'Dutch House' as the children struggle to find meaning in the events of their younger lives even long after they become adults. It is a bit of a fairytale like story though show more not as kitschy and there is no magical realism or heavy-handed allegory - just excellent story telling with pitch perfect contextual details and a wistful nostalgic vibe. The novel makes one ache for some of the seemingly random and meaningless moments and objects of childhood that are gone forever.

I adored both siblings, Maeve and Danny, and their relationship. The funny details like the random portraits of the VanHoebeek's, Lawyer Gooch and the trust, the frozen-vegetable company were all so delightful and oddball that it seemed the story must be true. Who can make this stuff up? It was an interesting and mostly satisfying ending - perhaps wrapped up a bit too Hollywood. Aesthetically perhaps the Dutch House would have been better off returning to the racoons - though maybe that would have been unbearably melancholy.

Anyway, I really liked this novel. At times I endeavor to veer away from straightforward fiction to more 'serious' classic literature or non-fiction - but I am always drawn to these artful yet traditionally told stories of families. For me, stories of flawed individuals living imperfect but still somehow poetic lives enriches my own. And perhaps the most refreshing thing about this novel is that it is NOT preachy - no not-so-subtle messages about the marginalized, the environment, the evils of capitalism - nary a mention of race or gender. Bravo - I am heartened to see the consideration for a Pulitzer. show less

Maeve and Danny are siblings raised is a unique mansion in Pennsylvania. The story follows their relationship over the course of decades. Through Danny’s eyes we see their lives carry forward even when they can’t help but fixate on the past. This book is a reminder that the plot matters very little in the hands of a gifted writer. Patchett has an incredible skill for building flawed characters that resonate deeply. Even though the action seems mundane, I couldn’t put it down.

She’s even manage to make the house itself a character. The book me and do some long jumping back-and-forth in Maeve and Danny’s timelines, but always with their connection as the tie that binds. Seeing the world through Danny’s eyes allows us to show more understand the siblings close ties. When their mother returns, their roles reverse. Now after decades of being a caregiver, Maeve is finally being cared for. It’s something that shakes Danny’s world in an understandable way. Another thing I love about this book is Patchett’s ability to craft deeply flawed characters. No one is perfect, they have a variety of motivations and the reader doesn’t always know every inch of that. They make selfish decisions or petty ones, and they feel so real because he is the storyteller, my loyalty is obviously lies with him in Maeve. But even Andrea, relegated to the role will be able stepmother, and Celeste, the harpy wife, are both described at times with fondness. And I think we understand that we aren’t seeing them as fully developed people, because Danny refused to.

BOTTOM LINE: I loved it. My favorite Patchett since Bel Canto.

UPDATE: I reread this one via the Tom Hanks narrated audio about six months after reading it for the first time. It was just as delightful the second time around and I found added layers of depth when I returned to it. show less

I discovered Ann Patchett and Anne Tyler at about the same time, as a result of which I've since had an unreasonable tendency to mix them up with each other, even though they are quite different kinds of writer and a generation apart in age. I finally got it straight in my mind which is which, and then Patchett went and wrote an Anne Tyler novel, and I'm back to square one...

... Well, not quite an Anne Tyler novel. There is a big house; we are on the fringes of an East Coast city; there is an Irish-American extended family; they are in the building trade; we have a multi-generation timeline from the 1940s to the present day, and so on. But, for one thing, it's Philadelphia not Baltimore, which probably makes a big difference if you show more happen to know either of them, and for another, where Tyler's stories are usually focussed on the matriarch, this is a story that centres on the absence of the mother.

The central question the book poses — why we find it so much harder to forgive a mother who leaves her children than we do a father — is perhaps a 21st century one, but everything else in this novel is comfortingly, even cloyingly, old-fashioned. The house is only an overgrown suburban villa really, but Patchett turns it into Manderley; people sit in cars and smoke cigarettes; boy meets girl in a train; there are delightful feudal relationships with servants; there's a good selection of funerals, weddings and family celebrations; there's even a portrait that spookily doesn't get any older. It's pleasant reading, very professionally done, a book you wouldn't hesitate to give your grandmother for Christmas, but it's not very likely to be a book you will remember long after you have read it.

I was amused by Tom Hanks's narration of the audiobook: they obviously forgot to get him to record the chapter-numbers and had to patch them in later, and there's a wonderful mix of resignation and exasperation in the way he says "Chapter Seventeen" and so on. show less

I am not entirely sure why I loved this book so much. Two children left with their father in a veritable museum of a house meet with all sorts of tragedies and roadblocks, and yet manage to find solace in one another while remaining forever haunted by the loss of the house. The writing is sublime. We see everything through the eyes of Danny, starting at a very young age until he's in his 50s. The narrative does hop about in time a bit, but it didn't get confusing, thankfully.

The unchanging house is an entity unto itself. It's the people living in it and those who are drawn to it who seem to fall apart.

"I’d never been in the position of getting my head around what I’d been given. I only understood what I’d lost."

I do love this show more author's work. show less

"The Dutch House was impossible…I could feel the entire house sitting on top of me like a shell I would have to drag around for the rest of my life." (88)

Danny Conroy narrates his family history overshadowed by the ostentatious house in the Philadelphia suburbs that initiated the unraveling of his family. He was only three when his mother deserted the family shortly after her husband surprised her with the mansion that came fully furnished with the ornate belongings of the Dutch family who had lived and died there. Nothing was changed, not even the life-sized portraits of the VanHoebeeks, "people worn by time, their stern and unlovely faces rendered with Dutch exactitutde." (5) Thank goodness, the lovely portrait of Maeve which graced show more the opposite wall (and the book's cover) softened those unrelenting stares. Maeve was devastated when her mother left. She became very ill and was later diagnosed with a serious case of diabetes. However, she rallied enough to become a motherly figure to Danny who barely remembers his mother as he tells the story of his family. He does remember his father's aloofness and his marriage to the conniving Andrea. Danny was 15 when his father died suddenly and Andrea evicted him from "her" beloved house. Of course, Maeve takes him in and their bond is sealed.

Although the plot of the book is rather thin, the complex sibling relationship is done so well that I got caught up quickly in the psychological drama bordering on fairy tale. There's a bit of a Cinderella feel with the blatant evil stepmother and a touch of Hansel and Gretel with the sister and brother clutching each other in the 'dark woods' of abandonment and poverty. Everything was left to Andrea with the exception of the allotment for Danny's education. Here is where Maeve's vindictiveness raises its ugly head. Danny is coerced into taking the long expensive road to becoming a physician to spend as much of their father's money as possible. Danny is so grateful to Maeve for her care that he will do anything to please her. Only Patchett's skill as a writer could make me care so much about these unsympathetic characters. Some of the best scenes are of the two of them parked outside the Dutch House picking the bitter scabs of their mistreatment.

I loved The Magician's Assistant when I read it in 1998. Bel Canto was worthy of the Orange Prize in 2002 and Truth and Beauty is one of my favorite memoirs. Now I can add The Dutch House to my list of favorites. show less