"The first time our father brought Andrea to the Dutch House, Sandy, our housekeeper, came to my sister's room and told us to come downstairs. 'Your father has a friend he wants you to meet,' she said.
Danny Conroy grows up in the Dutch House, a lavish folly in small-town Pennsylvania taken on by his property developer father. Though his father is distant and his mother is absent, Danny has his beloved sister Maeve: Maeve, with her wall of black hair, her delicacy, her brilliance. Life is comfortable and coherent, played out under the watchful eyes of the house's former owners in the frames of their oil painting.
Then one day their father bring Andrea home. Her arrival will exact a banishment: a banishment whose reverberations will echo for the rest of their lives.
As decades pass, Danny and his sister are drawn back time and again to the place they can never enter, knocking in vain on the locked door of the past. For behind the mystery of their own enforced exile is that of their mother's self-imposed one: an absence more powerful than any presence they have known.
The Dutch House is a story of family, betrayal, love, responsibility and sacrifice; of the powerful bonds of place and time that magnetise and repel us for our whole lives.
***
Having read this book and thought it wonderful I have been continually asking myself why I have never read any of Ann Patchett's books before! She has an extensive back catalogue, which I now have the joy of reading, so I am very happy about that.
The author portrayed this dysfunctional family with insight and understanding. I really liked the relationship between Danny and Maeve. They were totally believable, as indeed, were the less focal characters.
The time span covers several decades and I particularly enjoyed seeing how Danny's character developed. His narration starts when he is still a young boy and takes us through to his adult life. We see how his character matures and changes and makes the reader question how we think we may have reacted if we had been in the same situation.
The titular house itself plays a significant part in this book, playing as compelling a role as the characters do. The descriptions were tangible and I really could see it's exterior and wander around the rooms in my imagination. I think it takes enormous skill for a writer to be able to imbue an inanimate object with such life.
The book tackles many themes, among them, family, forgiveness and loylaty. Ms. Patchett is clearly a phenomenal storyteller and writes with acute observation of the world around her. I really cannot wait to read more of her work.
Have you read any of her earlier novels? Which were your favourites?
ISBN: 978 1526614971
Publisher: Bloomsbury
About the Author:
Ann Patchett is the author of seven novels and three works of non-fiction. She has been shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction three times; with The Magician's Assistant in 1998, winning the prize with Bel Canto in 2002, and was most recently shortlisted with State of Wonder in 2012. She is also the winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2012.
She is the co-owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee where she lives with her husband, Karl.
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