The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

I started reading Ann Patchett’s novels after thoroughly enjoying This is the Story of a Happy Marriage, a collection of memoirs and essays. I adored Bel Canto, have very much liked everything else of hers that I’ve read and am now adding The Dutch House to the list of this author’s books that I’ve loved.

The house in the story was a wildly ornate, three-story mansion in Pennsylvania built in the 1920s. The original owners, Mr and Mrs VanHoebeek, had made their fortune from cigarettes. The property was sold to the Conroy family after the VanHoebeek’s deaths.

The narrator, Danny Conroy grew up in the Dutch House with his older sister Maeve taking the place of his absent mother, who had disappeared when Danny was very small. Their father was an emotionally remote man who left the care of the children to the housekeepers, Sandy and Jocelyn.

When Danny was eight and Maeve fifteen, their father introduced them to their future step-mother, Andrea. Although a single mother to two daughters, Andrea wasn’t keen to take on Danny and Maeve, but she quickly became obsessed with the Dutch House and was never going to let go of their father or the house.

Danny and Maeve were increasingly displaced after Andrea moved in, and after their father’s death when Danny was just fifteen, Andrea booted him out of the house. After consulting their lawyer, Danny and Maeve realised that Andrea had manipulated their father into leaving his real estate businesses and properties to her without any other consideration for them other than leaving a trust fund for their education. In fairness to their father, he had believed that Andrea would do the right thing by his children.

Maeve, a mathematical genius, who had already left school and was working for a vegetable distribution business, took on the care of Danny. She pushed him to attend medical school, not because he wanted to be a doctor but because in studying medicine, he would use up as much of the available funds in the educational trust fund as possible.

Instead of becoming a doctor when he graduated, Danny started buying, renovating and selling buildings in New York. He and Maeve had long since fallen into a pattern of parking outside the Dutch House whenever he visited her, smoking cigarettes and reminiscing about the house, their staff, the VanHoebeeks and of course Andrea, who still lived in the house.

Maeve was everything to Danny, and she loved and missed the Dutch House. Their missing mother, who had hated the Dutch House, was everything to Maeve. Danny’s wife hated Maeve and the Dutch House, or more particularly, the importance of both to Danny. For Andrea, the Dutch House was everything.

The story eventually came full circle with each of the characters facing their demons. Mysteries were resolved and Maeve and Danny found it in their hearts to forgive Andrea. The story ended with the Dutch House coming to life again, and I finished the story feeling satisfied that all was right with the world.

I loved the cover, which represents a painting of Maeve as a young girl. It couldn’t have been any more fitting, in my opinion.

I will wait for a while before reading Tom Lake or anything else by Ann Patchett, as find that reading an author’s books too soon means that I am comparing them rather than enjoying the stories.