But the 40-year-old mansion was, in Cyril’s eyes, “the most beautiful house in Eastern Pennsylvania.”Įach stick of furniture and every painting on the walls, as well as the raccoons and fleas in the attic and the loyal maid/caretaker living in the garage, conveyed. Built in the 1920s, it had been neglected since the death of the original owners, the VanHoebecks. Their father, Cyril, “loved buildings the way boys love dogs” and purchased the Dutch House as a surprise gift for his wife, Elna, before Danny was born. The true bond, the real love story here, is between brother and sister - deeper than their tie to the house or their parents, or Danny to his wife (who, exasperated, refers to her husband and his sister as “Hansel and Gretel…walking through the dark woods holding hands no matter how old you get”). Reflecting in extended flashbacks, now-middle-aged Danny evaluates his and Maeve’s connection to “the Dutch House,” what it meant to each of them, and what they really lost and mourn. Have you ever stalked a house? Conflated the grief over lost family with a lost homeplace? In The Dutch House, Ann Patchett’s eighth novel, protagonists Danny Conroy and his older sister, Maeve, stalk and lament their childhood home throughout their lives.Īs she has before, the author explores family relationships, particularly the compensatory bond between siblings cut adrift by the absence of their mother, the death of their father, and their abrupt, premature exit from their onetime home.
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