The Dutch House by Ann Patchett review an irresistible modern fairytale Fiction

Table Of Content

• Ann Patchett Spins a Modern Fairy Tale in Her Luminous New Novel
• Motherless Children Make Their Own Family In Ann Patchett's 'The Dutch House'
• Click to PurchasePARNASSUS BOOKS (signed) INDIEBOUND BARNES & NOBLE HARPER COLLINS Listen on libro.fm
• Patchett: In Bad Relationships, 'There Comes A Day When You Gotta Go'
• The Dutch House by Ann Patchett review – an irresistible modern fairytale

Patchett's eighth novel is a paradise lost tale dusted with a sprinkling of Cinderella, The Little Princess and Hansel and Gretel. 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. 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. After she flees, ostensibly to India to devote herself to the poor, her family suffers, as if "they had all become characters in the worst part of a fairy tale," Patchett writes. Danny begrudgingly accepts his mother’s late appearance in his life, mostly to appease Maeve, whose heart attack precipitates Elna’s return.

Ann Patchett Spins a Modern Fairy Tale in Her Luminous New Novel

Though Danny and Maeve had a lonely childhood in the house May uses it to entertain rich and famous celebrities. When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.

Motherless Children Make Their Own Family In Ann Patchett's 'The Dutch House'

She certainly doesn't fall in love with Cyril's two children. The wicked stepmother's arrival, even more than their mother's ghosting, marks the end of Danny and Maeve's childhood. 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. Nevertheless, Cyril and Andrea's marriage is not a success and Andrea maintains a distance between herself and the Conroy children. When Danny is 15 and Maeve is 22 their father abruptly dies of a heart attack at work.

Click to PurchasePARNASSUS BOOKS (signed) INDIEBOUND BARNES & NOBLE HARPER COLLINS Listen on libro.fm

For Maeve, it turns out, this type of love is reserved for their absent mother. As the layers of the past are rolled away, the shocks keep coming. Vanished fairytale mothers have a habit of reappearing at critical times, and so it is with self-denying Elna, “the little sister of the poor, the assemblage of bones and tennis shoes”. 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. Cyril is revealed as weak and neglectful, a man who never really liked children, even his own.

At ICA At UTC: From Pages To Paintings In “The Dutch House” - WUTC

At ICA At UTC: From Pages To Paintings In “The Dutch House”.

Posted: Wed, 17 Jan 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]

Danny uses the money to launch a successful career in real estate. They have two children, a girl named May and a boy named Kevin. Though Danny is financially successful Celeste grows increasingly bitter that he never used his medical degree and puts the blame for the strain of their marriage on Maeve. Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House is a dark fairy tale about two smart people who cannot overcome their past.

Years later, Celeste admits she never liked her house, suggesting a thoughtless and speedy acquisition on Danny’s part. Patchett's previous novel, Commonwealth (2016), was her most autobiographical, and it also involved blended families and children left too much to their own devices. This novel takes a winding road through the forest and doesn’t rush to a finish, nor is the ending wholly surprising.

Built in boomtime 1920s Philadelphia, it boasts Delft mantels and marble floors, a ballroom and a dining room with a gilt ceiling “more in keeping with Versailles than Eastern Pennsylvania”. Crammed with silk chairs, tapestry ottomans, Chinese lamps and oil paintings, it is, as one of the characters observes, “a piece of art” and, like a piece of art, it ignites extreme reactions in the people who come into contact with it. After Maeve's death Danny and Celeste finally divorce and he spends more time at the Dutch House.

Danny is shocked when she proposes they marry his first year of medical school and he decides not to, a decision Celeste blames on Maeve. Danny completes medical school while dreaming of owning a real estate empire. Shortly before he must choose his graduation plans he manages to acquire, and then immediately sell, two parking lots on a tip from his mentor.

by Ann Patchett

Despite every outward sign of success, Danny and Maeve are only truly comfortable when they’re together. Throughout their lives they return to the well-worn story of what they’ve lost with humor and rage. But when at last they’re forced to confront the people who left them behind, the relationship between an indulged brother and his ever-protective sister is finally tested.

But eventually Danny comes to realize how much he's missed along the way, including the fact that the Conroys' two loyal housekeepers are sisters. "The problem, I wanted to say, was that I was asleep to the world. Even in my own house I had no idea what was going on," he comments. At the Dutch House they immediately see Andrea who mistakes Danny for his father. Their mother decides to stay in the house and nurse Andrea which horrifies Maeve. Elna continues to nurse Andrea and Danny at least partially blames her for his sister's death. The sun-drenched Dutch House – so named not for its architecture but for the nationality of its original owners, the Van Hoebeeks – is in every sense a hot property.

His employees call in Maeve who calls Danny and no one thinks to inform Andrea until later. Two weeks later Andrea, having assured herself of the fact that her husband's property passed entirely to her, kicks Danny out of the house and fires the housekeeper and cook who have acted as surrogate mothers to the Conroy children. An infuriated Maeve discovers that the only thing she could possibly access is a trust fund for education set up in the names of Danny, Norma and Bright. Maeve decides to send Danny to the most expensive schools she can find in order to drain the trust sending Danny to Choate Rosemary Hall, Columbia University, and to Columbia Medical School. Cyril Conroy is a hard-up but ambitious property developer with a talent for life-changing surprises.

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. On one of these visits Danny asks, "Do you think it's possible to ever see the past as it actually was?" Maeve insists she does just that. "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. "We look back through the lens of what we know now, so we're not seeing it as the people we were, we're seeing it as the people we are, and that means the past has been radically altered." Andrea eventually dies and May begs Norma not to sell the house for a few years until she becomes rich enough to buy it. To everyone's surprise she quickly becomes a rich and successful actress and is able to buy the Dutch House.