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Cathryn_Conroy
Oh, This Book! It's Magnificent! Read It. Savor It. It's Very Special.
Oh, this book! This book! This is one of those rare books that I not only enjoyed from the first sentence to the last, but also it touched my heart and soul in a way I always hope will happen with each book I read but only rarely does.
Magnificently written by Ann Patchett, this is the story of the Conroy siblings, Maeve and Danny. Told in the first person by Danny over a five-decade span, it begins with a recounting of their extraordinary childhood, growing up in what was known as "the Dutch house," a mansion—with a ballroom on the third floor and a dining room ceiling decorated in gold leaf—in the suburbs of Philadelphia. But all too soon, this magical world was destroyed for the children by the parents who were supposed to be loving them and taking care of them. First abandoned by their mother, ignored by their father, and later cast out on to the street by their stepmother, Maeve and Danny only have each other. She fiercely protects Danny. He idolizes Maeve. But when the unimaginable actually happens, their loving sibling relationship is tested to the core.
This is an astute psychological study of what it means to be a family and how those relationships—no matter how damaged they may be—ultimately determine who we are as adults. And it is only by forgiving, even when everything about it seems unforgiveable, that we find real happiness and contentment in life.
The writing is bold and forthright, but when needed it's perfectly subtle and nuanced. The story is definitely one that is character-driven so the plot plays second fiddle, but even so the "what happens next" part is absolutely captivating.
Bonus: Maeve Conroy is a type 1 diabetic, as are my son and grandson. I am forever grateful to Ann Patchett for her intelligent and perceptive descriptions of what it means to live with this dreadful disease.
This is a 10-star book in a five-star world. Read it. Savor it. It's a very special book.
Juliana
A house with character, a female character as large as they come
The novel is both the story of a family, the Conroys, and of the house which the family acquired after unexpected financial success. Originally belonging to the Dutch family of the VanHoebeeks, the house has a traditional flair and is imbued with the personality of its original owners, markedly dominated by the portraits of the master and mistress of the house. But this is mostly the story of Maeve Conroy as told by her younger brother, Danny, born a few years after the house was purchased. Symbolically, Maeve’s portrait is commissioned and painted as she becomes the dominant figure in the siblings’ lives and an indelible one in the household. More than a sister, Maeve is also the substitute for the mother who leaves them when Danny was three and Maeve ten, and then the substitute for their father, who dies after bringing to the house another wife with two daughters.
With the help of a cook and a housekeeper, Maeve sees her brother through illnesses and schools. However, the siblings choose careers that they truly love and feel drawn towards rather than those for which they study. Maeve is also a key player in Danny’s love life and then in the financial planning of his new family.
All this while, the two gravitate around the Dutch house, living in it and making their first memories without and with a step-mother, then observing it from a distance, as their paths take them away after their father’s death and then one more time returning to it under completely different circumstances.
It is Danny who tells the story of this house changing hands and influencing lives, so the story bears a tone of deep brotherly affection mixed with amazement at the ability of his sister to steer their lives, with nostalgia at the stability of family life and the melancholy of hardship. It is a splendidly told story, captivating and endearing though quite heart-wrenching.
Mary C
OMMYGOODNESS!! This is perfect perfection!
I was so sad to reach the end of this book …. sniff, sniff...I always feel like crying a little when this book ends. Especially, this one.
I always want great reads to go on forever, but this one in particular is a story and it's telling that I will miss. Ann Patchett was telling me a wonderful, complex, deeply satisfying story. When it ended, it was like I stopped at a traffic light and Ann Patchett got out of the book and it just stopped, this was a wonderful story and I wanted to keep reading and beg Ann to keep writing this wonderful story; surely there must be more to the story that she just forgot to write? The story was nicely wrapped up, all the loose ends were tied, and the tale was deeply satisfying in a way many books just can't achieve.
Cloggie Downunder
What a wonderful read!!
The Dutch House is the seventh novel by NYT best-selling American author, Ann Patchett. It had been Danny’s childhood home. Cyril Conroy had bought the incredible Dutch House, there in small-town Pennsylvania, in 1946 for his young family: his wife Elna, and five-year-old Maeve. It was just as the last Van Hoebeek, the original owners, had left it: furnishings, fittings, even clothing. Danny was born a few years later, and lived there until his step-mother threw him out at fifteen.
Danny’s mom had left when he was three; he was eight when Andrea Smith first came on the scene, but he and Maeve dismissed any idea of permanence. Andrea persisted, though; Andrea was fascinated with every detail of The Dutch House and Van Hoebeek family, who had made their fortune in packaged cigarettes.
Had Maeve and Danny paid more attention, they might have seen the signs, they might have predicted, but not prevented, it: just three years after she had first stood in front of the Van Hoebeek portraits in the drawing room, Andrea married Cyril, and took up residence in The Dutch House with her daughters. No longer were they the comfortable Conroy trio, lovingly cared for by Sandy and Jocelyn.
Danny had counted on following his canny father into real estate and construction; instead, Maeve insisted he study medicine at Columbia: their father’s trust, grudgingly dispensed by Andrea, was covering the not-inconsiderable cost. And on visits home, the siblings would park on Van Hoebeek Street, regard The Dutch House, and fume over their stolen inheritance, their self-made father’s fortune.
Maeve, aware Cyril’s humble beginnings, was the most resentful; Danny had “never been in the position of getting my head around what I’d been given. I only understood what I’d lost.” Not until a career had been gained and discarded, and a marriage and children made, some twenty-seven years after they had been ejected from The Dutch House, did Maeve and Danny finally acknowledge what their obsession had done to them: “We had made a fetish out of our misfortune, fallen in love with it. I was sickened to realize we’d kept it going for so long”
While Danny’s wife seems resentful of his close relationship with his sister, it is not until a certain, somewhat familiar old woman turns up at Maeve’s hospital bed that he realises: “I had a mother who left when I was a child. I didn’t miss her. Maeve was there, with her red coat and her black hair, standing at the bottom of the stairs, the white marble floor with the little black squares, the snow coming down in glittering sheets in the windows behind her, the windows as wide as a movie screen… ‘Danny!’ she would call up to me. ‘Breakfast. Move yourself.’”
This is very much a character-driven story, and it clearly demonstrates Patchett’s literary skill: her characters are interesting and allowed to grow and develop, to display insight and utter wise words. The bond between the siblings is so well portrayed, it’s impossible not to feel for them. Like Anne Tyler, Patchett manages to make the lives of fairly ordinary people doing fairly ordinary things worth reading about.
Patchett’s prose is wonderful: “The madder Maeve got, the more thoughtful she became. In this way she reminded me of our father – every word she spoke came individually wrapped” and “Her wrist looked like ten pencils bundles together”. And that striking cover? It neatly ties the whole thing together, beginning and end. What a wonderful read!!
Cindy Shotnik
Bonds Not Forgotten
I read this book in it’s entirety and then listened to the audiobook by Tom Hanks, which made it even more endearing. Yes, this is a story that will stay with me for some time and I do hope it’s made into an exclusive movie to be shared on Netflix or Prime.
Challis
OMIGOODNESS!! This is perfect perfection!
I was so sad to reach the end of this book …. sniff, sniff...I always feel like crying a little when this book ends. Especially, this one.
I always want great reads to go on forever, but this one in particular is a story and it's telling that I will miss. Ann Patchett was telling me a wonderful, complex, deeply satisfying story. When it ended, it was like I stopped at a traffic light and Ann Patchett got out of the book and it just stopped, this wonderful story and I wanted to keep reading and beg Ann to keep writing this wonderful story; surely there must be more to the story that she just forgot to write? The story was nicely wrapped up, all the loose ends were tied, and the tale was deeply satisfying in a way many books just can't achieve.
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