Books about houses are always special. When they have secrets, hearts and souls they have as much impact on folk as breathing humans do. The Dutch House is no exception.

This isn't a castle or a grand stately home steeped in history like some, but a (relatively) modern and beautiful piece of architecture, with large windows and gardens. For those who lived there it represents success and failure, wealth and poverty, family, forgiveness and abandonment. For the narrator of the story it is the place where he lost his mother but found a strong bond with a mother-like figure in his older sister. He also faced rejection, expectation and ambition.

The house represents different things for the family who grew up in it and, even after they leave, the Dutch House still has a nostalgic pull for some and a reminder of things others would rather forget. There is also a lot of self-pity, possessiveness and jealousy. Built by Dutch immigrants who left their personal possessions behind, it was bought by a self-made man in his shrewdness just after the Second world War. His wife didn't like the house and was often elsewhere, leaving behind her two children in the care of their loyal staff, until she finally left for good and the husband remarried. The second wife loves the house but not his children.

A family saga, that covers a few decades and generally easy to read. (A minor bugbear is that twice the expression 'he could care less' is used instead of 'he could not care less'). Overall this is the story of two siblings who stick with each other throughout the trials of life, a bit like Hansel and Gretel being sucked in towards the alluring gingerbread house with the wicked stepmother ready to eat them. Recommended.
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I really enjoyed this book. I love stories about families and how they interact. I felt sorry for Danny and Maeve when they had to leave The Dutch House but was impressed with how they coped with everything. I don’t think I was surprised by the ending - I suspected The Dutch House would come back to them. I thought their mother would turn up again in their lives but I was surprised at how Maeve reacted to it.
I would recommend this book to customers and our book club is reading it after I recommended it.

Fabulous! A modern fairy tale.... Books like this make a bookseller's job easy! AND Tom Hanks narrating the audio, honestly, why reason have you got NOT to listen/read this book!

I really enjoyed this book. Strong characters and an unconventional family. As always by this author, this book is a very well-written family drama. Recommended.

Captivating from the first page. We learn about siblings Maeve and Danny, and how they support each other when their mother abandons them and, some time later, their father dies.
Their father, Cyril, remarried Andrea when Elna leaves him. His new wife doesn’t take to Maeve and Danny and when their father dies she leaves them to their own devices and refuses to have them back in the house.
The house is, of course, central to the story as it is the reason for their parents divorce which is the catalyst for everything that follows. Everyone who has lived there has strong feelings about it, some good, some bad.
Beautifully written with wonderful descriptions. I felt like I was there.
The cover was what drew my attention to this lovely book. I’m so glad I read it.
Thank you to Ann Patchett, Net Galley and the publisher, Bloomsbury, for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I’ve been aware of Ann Patchett’s books for years without ever thinking that I might enjoy them, but this one sounded appealing to me so I thought I would give it a try. I’m glad I did because I loved it – it just shows how wrong you can be about an author!

The Dutch House is the story of brother and sister Danny and Maeve Conroy, and their obsession with the house in Philadelphia in which they grew up. It’s no ordinary house; named for the nationality of the people who built it in the 1920s, the Van Hoebeeks, the Dutch House is an architectural wonder with ornate floors and ceilings and luxurious furnishings. When Cyril Conroy purchases it in the 1940s, he intends it to be a wonderful surprise for his family. However, his wife, Elna, comes to hate the house and everything it represents. For her, it is symbolic of all the inequality in the world – how can it be fair for some people to have so much and others so little? She begins to spend increasingly longer periods of time away from the house, until one day she leaves and doesn’t come back.

Maeve and Danny are devastated by their mother’s sudden and unexplained disappearance, but things quickly become worse when Cyril marries again and his new wife, Andrea, arrives at the Dutch House with her two young daughters. Andrea makes it clear that she has no time for her stepchildren and doesn’t want them in her life so, when Cyril dies a few years later, she throws them out of the Dutch House and leaves them to make their own way in the world.

For the rest of their lives, Danny and Maeve will struggle to move on and let go of the past. They will sit outside the Dutch House, looking through the gates and wondering who lives there now. They will let the events of their childhood influence the career paths they follow and put strain on their future relationships. And they will never forget that Andrea is to blame for all of this.

You could describe this as a book about a house, but I think of it more as a book about people and the connections between them…in particular, the relationship between a brother and a sister. When they find themselves cast out and alone in the world, Danny and Maeve have no one else they can rely on but each other; Maeve, who is seven years older, takes on the role of mother, overseeing Danny’s education and making sacrifices for him, despite struggling with her own health problems. The bond between them is deep and unbreakable and although there are times when it seems to restrict them from doing things they really want to do and times when it gets in the way of their other relationships, I still found it very moving.

The novel is narrated entirely by Danny and as he is only a small child when his mother leaves and still just a teenager when he is forced out of the Dutch House, there’s a sense that some of the information he is giving us may be slightly unreliable. It is only later in life, as he sits in the car outside the house reminiscing with Maeve, that certain things become clear to him and start to make more sense. As the story progresses towards its end the full picture emerges and we begin to wonder ‘what if’? What if, instead of always staying in the car, Danny and Maeve had gone and knocked on the door of the Dutch House one day? What if they had tried to contact Andrea and speak to her as adults – could they have cleared the air and moved on with their lives? What if they had made more effort to find their mother and had asked her why she walked out on them as children? They will never know the answers to these questions, but I’m sure we all have similar thoughts about our own lives – things we could have done differently or not done at all.

I loved this book and will now have to read Ann Patchett’s earlier books, which I had dismissed as not for me!

"Everyone in Elkins Park knew what went on in the Dutch House." Did they? Well the narrator Danny and his sister Maeve didn't and although I know Patchett is a well respected writer I felt it was a long and tortured road to really find out.
The scene is set after their father Cyril Conroy establishes a large fortune in property development and decides to show his wealth by buying and restoring The Dutch House a magnificent property in the suburbs of Philadelphia. There are the trappings of wealth but as ever the lack of love. Their father is distant- in person and in parental care- although the scenes where Danny travels around in the car with his father collecting rents on a Saturday morning were perhaps for me the most emotional of the book. We are told their mother suddenly left but this is only much much later revealed in the denouement of the plot.
Maeve is the older sister, trying to care for Danny yet wanting to display her brilliance as an independent young woman whilst Danny is early on concerned that he might 'lose 'his main friend in life because of Maeve's diabetes and fragile health.
It seemed obvious that when their father brought in a new younger woman it was all going to unravel for the siblings and the novel highlights their continued yearning (by parking outside the house and hoping to be included in these new lives) as a tragic obstacle to them moving forward.
It is intricately written from the narrator's viewpoint (Danny) but I longed for more input from Fluffy (the Irish maid who it appears had a fling with their father) and the servants who are also expunged from the Dutch House as the new woman on the block Andrea takes charge.
It all comes to light too late for me.
I can't doubt it is well written but I felt unconcerned about the main characters and felt I was stuck between the grandeur of lavish folly that was the building and the stark reality that became of the children.

I was still at the point in my life when the house was the hero of every story, our lost and beloved country.

It was apt that I read Ann Patchett’s latest novel, The Dutch House, while I was at McCrae. McCrae is the place where I’ve spent all of my summers. This year, I saw for the first time, the house that has been built where my family’s fibro beach shack once stood. When the shack was sold (I was devastated) people said to me, “It’s just a house, you still have the memories.” Logically, I knew this to be true but it didn’t explain why I continued to pass the house, seeing the unfamiliar cars in the driveway, and the new curtains hanging in the window, and always wondering, “Did ‘they’ love the house as much as I did?”

In The Dutch House, I found kindred spirits in siblings Maeve and Danny. The house in question is named for the nationality of its original owners, the Van Hoebeeks (although features Delft mantlepieces, a dining room with a deep blue and gilt ceiling, and a powder-room with carved walnut panels of birds and flowers). Danny describes the house as “…more in keeping with Versailles than Eastern Pennsylvania…” and as a child, found its opulence ‘mortifying’.

Danny and Maeve are forced to leave the Dutch House but, as adults, they frequently return, parking across the street, observing the house from a distance and reflecting on what had happened to them (I won’t give that part of the story away!) –

“…like swallows, like salmon, we were the helpless captives of our migratory patterns. We pretended that what we had lost was the house, not our mother, not our father. We pretended that what we had lost had been taken from us by the person who still lived inside….

It is during one of these visits that Danny asks Maeve whether she thought it was possible to ‘…ever see the past as it actually was.’ While Maeve insists that she does that, Danny is not so sure and proposes that we in fact ‘…overlay the present onto the past,’

“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.”

So where does this leave me, and my memories of a far-from-opulent beach shack? I think I’m with Danny, and that my ‘past’ with the beach shack represents a carefree childhood; an endless summer; family; a life free of responsibility, timetables, and expectations – all seen though the far more burdened lens of the present.

I’ve said little about the plot of The Dutch House – I won’t go into specifics but know that the gentle twists and turns are absolute perfection.

Equally wonderful is the deliciously complex theme of motherhood, which Patchett magnifies by adding fairy tale elements to the story – the ‘wicked’ stepmother; the distant father; the fairy godmother; a red coat; life-saving elixirs; and the magical castle (and in the case of the Dutch House, its secret doors; curtains enclosing window-seats; a dark basement; and chests and wardrobes full of things that hadn’t been touched in decades). These narrative elements are familiar and yet Patchett incorporates them out in a way that is unexpected but nonetheless believable.

Mothers were the measure of safety, which meant that I was safer than Maeve. After our mother left, Maeve took up the job on my behalf but no one did the same for her.

5/5 I didn’t think I could love a story as much as I loved Commonwealth, but there you go, Patchett has done it again.

I received my copy of The Dutch House from the publisher, Bloomsbury Publishing ANZ, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.

The place you grew up will always hold significant meaning, whether it's filled with happy memories, linked to sorrow or trauma, or a complicated combination. For Danny and Maeve Conway their house loomed larger than life. The 'Dutch House' is an exquisite, elegant, ornate house, the house which drove their mother away, the house which was taken over by their step-family, the house from which they were eventually exiled.

Ann Patchett's latest novel uses this unique house to explore themes of family, memory, loss, grief and life itself. Told through the eyes of the self absorbed, often selfish and sometimes petulant Danny, we see the siblings as they navigate life from childhood through to their 50s. Elder sister Maeve is the most wonderfully drawn character - one of the best in modern literature. A portrait of her as a girl watches over the whole book, and throughout Maeve is simultaneously girlish and headstrong, but also always the responsible adult, taking care of her brother.

The dysfunctional family relationships are tough to read about, but very well represented. Patchett expertly captures the hurt, resentment and grudges that can build over years, and also the way we look back on our personal histories. Memory and how we interpret the events of our lives is a huge and important theme of the book, and it is a perfect portrait of how the past catches up with us and how we dissect our memories and relationships.

The storytelling is enchanting. Patchett creates a set of characters and circumstances that are surprisingly engaging because they are just outside of the everyday. When you strip back the plot it is almost mundane but the history of the characters become sensationalised through their own storytelling. It is wholly original, and the reader has no idea where this journey will take them.

What can I say about this book that hasn’t already been said? Intelligent, elegant, and a beautiful read which I’ve heartily been recommending to everyone.

This isn't a title about plot, it's about characters and most specifically sibling interation. They're not always likeable and come from a place of entitlement and privilege, but the whole tale just hangs together so well, it doesn't matter. A timeless new piece from a master of the modern novel.

I was drawn to the cover...who wouldn't be?!

This is a beautifully written book. The pace is slow, but it is one to savour and enjoy. The story centres around two siblings, Danny and Maeve Conroy, and their family home, and explores the intricate ties and tensions between them, over a period of years. The characterisation and descriptions were wonderful and how I would love to visit the Dutch House! I can picture it as if I had lived there.

This was my first Ann Patchett bok and it definitely won't be my last. Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

NetGalley/Publisher review:

What a brilliant book - it must be read! Danny and his sister Maeve have such a strong bond of love for each other but for the house too that they share with the people who lived there before in a strange compelling way. When their father brings home Andrea and her daughters their world changes - not for the better. It is so heart wrenching that I could barely carry on reading but it was worth it.

3.5★
“She leaned over to light her cigarette off the stove’s gas flame.

‘I wish you wouldn’t do that.’ What I meant to say was, You are my sister, my only relation. Do not put your face in the f*cking fire.

She straightened up and exhaled a long plume of smoke across the kitchen. ‘I’ve got it down now. I burned off my eyelashes at a party in the Village a couple of years ago. You only have to do that once.’”

She is Maeve Conroy, the older sister of Danny, the narrator. Both grew up in the Dutch House, built in eastern Pennsylvania in 1922 by a Dutch couple, long gone, and bought lock, stock and furnishings by their father, Cyril, in the late 1940s, before Danny was born.

“Seen from certain vantage points of distance, it appeared to float several inches above the hill it sat on. The panes of glass that surrounded the glass front doors were as big as storefront windows and held in place by wrought-iron vines.”

The children loved it. Their mother didn’t. Paintings of the Dutch couple, Mr. and Mrs. VanHoebeek (“Van-who-bake”), dominate the drawing room and a portrait of Maeve, at ten in her bright red coat, hangs on the opposite wall. That’s the cover of the book, which is great.

The story is told in a circular fashion. It opens with their father bringing home a woman, Andrea, to meet his children. Their mother had left, returned, left, returned, and finally left for good. The two servants, Sandy and Jocelyn, have been raising the children, who are comfortable with things the way they are. Maeve is fifteen, Danny, eight.

Andrea is obviously smitten with the grand house but seems less enthusiastic about Cyril’s children. Maeve is already a head taller than the tiny widow, and later, when they discover Andrea has two little girls, there is even less likelihood she will view them favourably.

”Though the story will be remembered that Maeve and Andrea were at odds right from the start, that wasn’t true. Maeve was perfectly fair and polite when they met, and she remained fair and polite until doing so was no longer possible.”

Cyril has become a successful property developer and Danny loves going with him to inspect buildings and building sites and collect the rents from tenants. He looks forward to taking over the company one day. He’s learning how to fix taps, patch cracks, work with his hands.

“’The only way to really understand what money means is to have been poor,’ he said to me when we were eating lunch in the car. ‘That’s the strike you have against you. A boy grows up rich like you, never wanting for anything, never being hungry’—he shook his head, as if it had been a disappointing choice I’d made—'I don’t know how a person overcomes a thing like that.’”

He loves his dad, but it’s Maeve who is the gravitational force around which he orbits. They are fiercely loyal to each other, an unbreakable unit against the world. Maeve manages his life.

I found Danny completely self-absorbed, worrying mostly about himself and Maeve, but taking little real interest in anyone else. He loves playing basketball with friends, but they aren’t part of the story.

It’s interesting to read about children growing up in post-war Pennsylvania and how a war veteran like their father managed to establish himself. It is not interesting to have scene after scene after scene of Maeve and Danny talking about the house and picking at the scabs on the wounds caused by Andrea, and before that, their mother’s disappearance.

It’s all about Danny, and I wasn’t that crazy about him. I understand the popular audio book is narrated by Tom Hanks. The voice in my head was a bit petulant sometimes, more like Steve Carell's character from the American version of The Office, when Maeve was talking Danny into something. [I must admit, I haven't heard the Hanks rendition, and he's such a good actor, I know he can complain as well as anyone. But he's better known for being likeable and smart.]

I lost interest as time went on. I found the strength of Maeve’s influence a bit much to swallow. I don’t want to give any spoilers, so I’ll just say that the alliances that formed later and the resolution of some of the relationships seemed to tie up the loose ends too neatly and unrealistically, for me.

But don’t take my word for it. This is a very popular book, and you may love it as so many others have. I enjoyed it enough to round up to four stars rather than down to three.

Thanks to NetGalley and Bloomsbury for the preview copy from which I’ve quoted.

I feel I must be one of the last reviewers to read this bestseller so I can only apologise for my tardiness! After all, The Dutch House was one of the biggest hits of 2019 and it isn’t even due out in paperback until May this year. So, this intrigued me as 2019 was packed with big name authors and return of familiar worlds and names – what was it about The Dutch House that was turning readers into evangelists?

First up, I must disclose that I read this in a day. All the way through. Yet this isn’t a thriller with a powerful narrative drive; rather, The Dutch House is a delicate family drama that reveals itself in both familiar and unsuspecting ways. And since I put the book down, I often find myself thinking about its themes of family, the power of a calling, regret, revenge and reckonings. And how big family dramas are often, more truthfully, to be found in the private turmoil of emotions rather than explosive confrontations.

Ann invites us into the world of Danny and Maeve, a brother and sister who live with their father in the titular mansion in Pennsylvania. Their mother has long since fled for reasons that remain unclear and, their father being emotionally unavailable, the two have formed an unshakeable bond between themselves and their household staff.

But the familiar is suddenly thrown into turmoil when their father brings home a new woman who, obsessed with the mansion, its paintings and its history, quickly ensures she becomes their stepmother. But this is a very contemporary evil stepmother and no sooner are her feet under the table then Maeve and Danny are pushed out. And this becomes emphatic and permanent when their father dies soon after and the pair are removed from the house and access to its fortune.

“…traditionally the first generation makes the money, the second generation spends the money, and the third generation has to go to work again. But in our case, out father made a fortune and then he blew it. He completed the entire cycle in his own lifetime. He was poor, then rich, and now we’re poor.”

What’s interesting in this is that the conclusion obviously has to be a reckoning; Maeve and Danny must at some point come full circle and confront this injustice. But this is a story that spans five decades. The passing of time affects this story profoundly – as it does in reality. Grievances come and go, people change. Their lives take them in new directions, new pressures and demands take our focus. And that is what Ann captures here. Her writing dances over the decades with ease – there is no drag or slog; instead we witness Maeve and Danny struggle to shrug off the shadows of childhood but also realise they cannot move forward until they find peace.

And that peace does finally come – but not in the way you expect. Because at the heart of this is the message that even when you think you get what you want, it may not be what you need. You’ve to look to yourself to find peace.

This is a beautiful book. Ann has drawn such interesting characters and the way she brings these characters together is so fascinating – how sometimes they seem to fit as a natural family, how it is clear at other times that they should never have been a family. (“God’s truth,” Maeve said. “Our father was a man who had never met his own wife.”) But it is her deft touch that marvels me most. By all account, this is an epic but it doesn’t feel like it; it is intimate rather than sweeping, and bittersweet rather than melodramatic.

Refreshing and interesting story although sad and frustrating. Beautifully written and engaging and I enjoyed a setting that is largely unknown to me.

The Dutch House is a grand beautiful house on the outskirts of Philadelphia. We learn all about the house and how it dominated the lives of Meave and Danny two siblings who grew up in the Dutch House. At times I was reduced to tears, shouting at the characters not to do things. Beautiful and sad.

Loved loved LOVED this book. Beautifully written and really good story line. I also found the characters really interesting. Thank you netgalley for the chance to read this in return for a review.

Oh The Dutch House. I love you. It’s hard to put into words why. It wasn’t too sad. Because you learned the mom left at the beginning and don’t care for the dad, these didn’t really affect me. It was a huge comfort read. I loved Danny and Maeve and their sad orphan lives. How Danny just becomes a doctor because his sister wants him too in a weird vengence play. It was just so cosy in there. I loved that Maeve forgave her mom and couldn’t forgive her mom for helping her stepmother. That was just so infuriating, but showed who her mom really was. A martyr for everyone but her family. I liked the comfortable and easy relationship between Danny and Celeste and their kids. And just what The Dutch House means. I just loved it. There was a bit of magic here that I can’t put into words, no matter how hard I try.

Brilliantly written story about two siblings who are thrown out of Paradise (the exquisitely crafted Dutch House of the title), by their stepmother when their father dies. The house looms in the background of this family story as a symbol of relationships, about disappointing parents, about moving on - or not - when bad things happen. The characters are beautifully drawn and this is a hugely enjoyable read.