The Dutch House is a beautifully constructed novel. It's a great American novel about a family that spans five decades and more. The narative is told by Danny whose voice Anne Patchett captures with superb realism. She characterises with skill Danny's essence as a small boy, as a young man and as a middle-aged father. Danny tells us the story is about his sister, Maeve, but this book is really much more. The story is about the siblings and those who have shared or touched their lives. The Dutch House, itself, is a character within this novel of character because the extraordinary house remains a constant in the protagonists' lives unchanging even though those who have lived there grow and change as people. They survive life's battering and changing personal circumstances. Maeve is diabetic from childhood. She cares for Danny when they are thrown out of their home by their stepmother. Danny and Maeve, throughout their tangled lives, have eachother as a constant but like migratory birds are drawn back over and over to the Dutch House to look in from the outside, analyse circumstances and remember. This is a novel about relationships, rites of passage, growing older with understanding and grace. It's about experience, hurt and Importantly, forgiveness. The Dutch House is an exceptionally poignant novel with many wise passages. It's funny, warm, endearing and enchanting. Many scenes remain long after the final page is turned but above all remarkable for this reader, lingering long after the last page was turned are pictures of the house in frost and May, Danny's daughter as a mouse in The Nutcracker Ballet. It's a tense scene that is perfect because it pulls everything the book is about together. The final scenes also are exquisitely portrayed. On the surface it is a moving novel about abandoned siblings and the importance of the house they grew up in to them. It's really a novel about how past and present converge but above all it contains a nuanced and gripping narrative drive ( no spoilers) with perceptive writing about relationships where occasionally characters flit in and out like ghosts and at other times these same secondary characters draw our full attention to them. Ann Patchett has a wonderful voice reminiscent of Anne Tyler and Jeffrey Eugenides with a dash of John Updike. This is the first of her novels I have read. It certainly won't be the last.

Wow, I loved this novel & had that rare feeling of living in it for the 3 days of reading it (& racing back to it at any opportunity). Her characters are stunning; their arcs completely believable & the house truly breathes as its own character. A total gem of a book that I’ll be recommending far and wide.

A lovely and impelling read. To be honest I didn’t think much of the blurb and then got pulled straight into this family tale. Relatable characters and poignant stories.

The Dutch House is Ann Patchett's eighth novel, and the fourth book of hers that I've read. It's just pipped her last novel, Commonwealth, another family saga, to top place as my favourite of her novels that I've read thus far.

This is the story of a house. Before I started reading I found it hard to imagine how one house could be so instrumental in impacting the lives of the members of one family, but this is exactly what this novel goes on to explain. We follow the narrator, Danny, and his sister Maeve, as they grow up in the Dutch House in Philadelphia. What happens in this house as they grow up shapes the rest of their lives, and I found the resulting story totally captivating. This novel is, for me, Patchett at her best - just when you think the narrative might be losing its way something happens to suck you right back in to the story. One thing I love about books is when they make me view my own life and relationships in a different light, and that's something The Dutch House definitely achieved - namely about sibling relationships and the nature of family. While they're by no means identical novels I'd venture that if you enjoyed Commonwealth you'll find something to enjoy in this novel, too.

What a tremendous story this is, one that I feel I will go back to and read again and again.
The Dutch House wasn't really a house to be owned, it was a house that owned the people that lived there because even when they left there was always that pull to return to it. The story follows the lives of brother and sister, Danny the younger sibling by seven years, who tells the story and his sister Maeve. The house was unique their father had bought it before their mother saw it. It was his haven and her hell. Elma had always been a careful woman with money and now there she was with servants. Not something she could adjust to. Their mother often left and returned until one day their father told them she wouldn't be coming back.
When their father turned up one day with Andrea, a much younger woman than him, their lives began to change. When Andrea brought her two daughters Maeve and Danny were left to look after them, their lives became secondary. When tragedy struck their lives became their own.
This is an epic read that stretches years through the lives of the two siblings as the past and the people that had impacted them are never far away. The Dutch House still has that magnetic pull to them but a greater pull keeps them still at arm's length away.
The story is tremendous, with characters you feel you have known as they age from chapter to chapter. Their struggles and heartbreak, with an end that just knocked me off balance with its shocks and aftershocks. Perfection, just perfection.
I wish to thank Rachel Wilkie Head of Marketing at Bloomsbury Books for inviting me to read and review this book and for an e-copy of the book via NetGalley, which I have reviewed honestly.

4.5 stars. A wonderful study of a family over three generations and their relationship with the Dutch House. This is a poignantly observed essay on how nostalgia and the ghosts of our past affect our present and inform our future. I am most grateful to have received an arc of this from Netgalley. Thanks for the opportunity to read this marvellous book.

Love love love Ann Patchetts writing. Only the second of hers that I have read but I’m off to buy her complete backlist now. The story of the family that lived in “ the Dutch house” told through the eyes of the son Danny. Danny and his sister Maeve live with their single father, but we are immediately introduced to Andrea who is to become their new stepmother..... and whose impact on their lives is to become shattering.

One of the best “family dramas” ( this is such a bad term that does it no justice that I am off to find myself a better one!) I’ve read. Brilliant writing and superb characterisation that I could have read his book forever.

Danny and Maeve Conroy live with their father Cyril - their mother having disappeared when Danny was 3 and Maeve was 11 - in the Dutch House, a large, beautiful unusual building that their father bought before Danny was born. Their father is a distant man, and they're largely taken care of by Sandy and Jocelyn (cook and housekeeper) until he marries Andrea and everything changes. Andrea gradually erodes Maeve from the family, and when their father dies when Danny is 15, she throws both of them out of the house. Maeve takes care of Danny all through his life, putting him first even if it means putting her own life on hold.

It's absolutely superb. It's not a fast moving book, but it's gripping (the unexpected event about 2/3rds of the way through made it difficult to put down). The little bits of Cyril Conroy's character that come through in memories are intriguing, as are the revelations about their mother.. As it's Ann Patchett, it's also beautifully written, with the house as its own presence in the background of it all.

What a lovely read this was. It is my first book by this author and now I need to search for more. She has written a story that is centred about siblings Danny and Maeve Conroy and The Dutch House. The book describes the occupants of the house and the effects that it had on them from the early Dutch owners to the Conroy family. The story flows in such a manner that it makes reading so natural. It is a deeply emotional book full of many aspects of caring for others and the relationships this caring brings. The characters and the descriptions are so vivid that it is easy to relate to both and to become a part of the story. At one point I felt that we were re-enacting Cinderella with the wicked stepmother and her two daughters but this was oh so much more than that.
The way that the story was finalized was just amazing and I loved it.
Thank you for letting me read this book NetGalley.

This is a book about the bond between siblings; the repercussions of past events that echo down the years and the attachment people can feel for a place. In this case, the place is a big, grand house, and the siblings are Danny and his big sister, Maeve. Their mother flees when Danny is just a toddler, leaving Maeve to step into her shoes. When the children gain a step-mother, they soon learn they’re not welcome in their own home and the future they had planned comes tumbling down. A beautifully written, gentle book, The Dutch House is one to savour.

Not my usual genre so I thought I would give it a try. I have never read this author before and now I realise what I have been missing.. A beautifully written story of a family. The book stats at the end of WW2 and is set in Pennsylvania and the people who lived in the Dutch House. The characters were wonderful and so believable. I actually felt like I was with them through their loves, obsessions, betrayals and so much more. The Dutch House is a beautiful book, a beautiful read and a beautiful story I LOVED IT. An easy five stars and so Highly Recommended.
I would like to thank the author, Bloomsbury Publishing and Netgalley for the ARC in return for giving an honest review.

I am a fan of Ann Patchett so I really appreciated the opportunity to read The Dutch House and I enjoyed it. It is mainly about the relationship between a brother and sister who have to cope without their parents.

This story of an American family is centred around their house, once owned by a Dutch family whose portraits and ghosts are still there.
But although the house is the backdrop for their stories and the place that unites and divides them, this is really a story of love and loss and what divides us as humans and brings us together.
It took me a little while to get into the rhythm of the book and its backwards and forwards in time, but once I did I was hooked.
I really cared about Danny, the narrator, his sister Maeve and their parents and stepmother.
It’s told over a number of years.
Although the book is quirky, the relationships felt real and familiar.
I have enjoyed all of Ann Patchett’s novels and this is another winner.

I was invited to read this by the publisher via #NetGalley- having never read Ann Patchett before, I went in knowing nothing about it.

I really enjoyed it! It’s the story of a brother and sister’s relationship into adulthood, the house they grew up in (it has a leading role), the memories they shared - or didn’t- & the ‘family’ that brought them up. It’s also about nostalgia, letting go and moving on.

I don’t remember reading a sibling relationship that I identified with so strongly. The characters and their lives felt incredibly imperfect and real.

Sad, hopeful, beautifully told, and with some cracking lines. I’ll be searching out Ann Patchett’s earlier work now.

There are some books that you just keep on reading, no matter what, and this was one of them. I knew very little about "The Dutch House" when I started it, but I just could not put it down; reading it felt like following the person's memories, with the main story full of digressions and jumps, but it was so skillfully written that it was easy to follow despite all the meanderings.
It is the story of the Conroy siblings, Maeve and Danny, living in a grand house with an absent father. Their happy childhood is full of other people's treasures, as the place came with the original owners' - the Van Hoebeek family - possessions: opulent furniture, third floor ballroom, beds, two huge portraits and more. But then their life changes forever once their father brings home Andrea - a woman as obsessed with the place as much as he is.

"The Dutch House" is a story about absence and love - sibling love, married love, lost love and love found. We follow characters - mothers, fathers, wives and daughters - and their stories, get invested in them and try to understand their motives and reasoning. Perhaps not all the parts of the book are come across for me as justifiable, and perhaps some can even seem a bit farfetched, but in real life people often find themselves disbelieving and skeptical.

It is also the story of the house, which is as important a character in the book as real people. The house lives and has its' own stories, as the author sparingly uncovers details throughout the book. The house is what binds the story together, at its beginning and end. The story is beautifully written, and so well paced you can really feel the rhythm of the story being told.

Ann Patchett's latest novel proves to be a absolute delight to read with its echoes of the darkest of fairytales with the requisite wicked stepmother in the form of Andrea. We are provided with Patchett's acute understanding and keen observational insights of what it is to be human, the complex nature of family and the dysfunctional dynamics that proliferate. Shortly after WW2, Cyril Conroy's life catapults from poverty into wealth which propels him to buy the architectural jewel that is the Dutch House with its many windows in the Pennsylvania suburbs for his wife, Elna, a house that is to splinter his family apart. As the narrative moves back and forth in time through five decades, the house turns out to be an integral part and trigger for the dramas that ensue, the highs and the lows. Danny grew up with little memory of his mother who left so early in his life, and his father is a distant figure, contributing to the strong bond with his older sister, the bright and determined Maeve, a woman of substance who takes on the mantle of caring and protecting him.

Cyril brings Andrea into the lives of Maeve and Danny, and goes on to marry her. Andrea, with her children, is driven by ambition that inform her behaviour and decisions, catalysts for how events pan out in the house and family interactions until Cyril's dies, leaving Andrea with everything. Andrea reacts by throwing Maeve and Danny out. The siblings are pushed out of their privileged and comfortable lives, finding themselves facing a life of poverty and challenges with only each other to rely on. Maeve dedicates her life to Danny at the expense of her own life and ambitions, with both positive and negative outcomes, although their future lives are to be shaped by their constant obsession with the house and their inability to let go of the past.

Patchett writes a compulsive novel of family, sibling relationships, secrets, memories that can so often turn out to be unreliable, coming to terms with what life can throw at you, grief, loss, love and forgiveness. It is beautifully written, with rich, atmospheric vibrant descriptions and with Patchett's stellar and skilful characterisation and development, she has an uncanny capacity to give us pictures of emotional and meaningful depth of her characters interior lives. This is a brilliant, thought provoking, multilayered, complicated and well crafted book infused with a wryness and humour that made it such a memorable read. Many thanks to Bloomsbury for an ARC.

A beautiful novel that took me right to a time and place every time I picked up the book.
Starting in the years following World War Two in Pennsylvania, Danny tells the story of his life and his relationship with his sister Maeve. Their love and closeness was really well written and I liked them both, though they were believability flawed.
The description of the Dutch House itself was powerful and evocative. It is at the heart of the book and is the place of so many memories, dreams and disappointments,. The draw of the Dutch House to Danny and Maeve runs through the book, along with it’s enduring impact.
I would highly recommend this book. It would be a really good book club book and I imagine it will be appearing on a number of literary prize short lists.
Thank you to #NetGalley, the author and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this fabulous book.
#TheDutchHouse

<i>Thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury for the ARC</i>

I loved spending time with the characters in this book, observing the lives and struggles of Maeve and Danny Conroy.

This was the second Ann Patchett novel I read, but won't be the last. It had the same feeling for me as [book:Bel Canto|5826]. Characters that I loved to spend time with, following their growing up and turning into adults with their strengths and flaws. Lovely cover as well.

As the lives of brother and sister Danny and Maeve progress, the Dutch House is always a factor in their lives. First as the symbol of prosperity for their father, then the force that drove their mother away and attracted their stepmother. Later as a meeting point for brother and sister when they spend time in the car emphasising their tie to eachother. In the end a place where the people from their former lives meet again and reconcile.

The strongest theme was the sense of duty of care. The duty that parents have towards their children, the duty that couples have to care for eachother, the duty of the servants towards their employers and vice versa, the care between siblings, the responsibility of the stepparent, duty towards society.

The Dutch House is a story of siblings, Danny and Maeve Conroy, their obsessive connection with the iconic family house, they lived in as young children, and how their lives unfolded over five decades. The story is narrated by Danny over multiple non-linear time periods. The various time jumps and reflections back to events of impact or importance felt like a jigsaw puzzle being built, where there is the uncertainty of the next piece but once it is placed, the complete picture becomes clearer and clearer. This is a wonderful skill Ann Patchett possesses and you never feel lost or confused with the time jumps, as she manages the transitions so deftly.

The other major hallmark of Ann Patchett is her development of amazing characters and relationships. Maeve is Danny’s older sister of 7 years, she is very intelligent, a diabetic, caring to the extreme for her brother, and a character that captivates you. Danny is much more emotionally reserved and his development into adulthood is enthralling to watch. While he takes advantage of top-class education in medicine he can’t shake his love for his father’s business in real estate. Their mother is a memory, having left them when they were young and the story starts with the father bringing Andrea home to visit. Andrea eventually becomes the wife, the new mother and the force that shapes future relationships and living conditions.

“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.”

It’s not too long before Andrea’s own two daughters become her sole focus and ambition, and the existing family and staff are unwelcome reminders of a past she wasn’t part of. Andrea is an intriguing character, dispassionate, harsh, and greedy, and heir to the Dutch House mansion. Even within the first few years of marriage “It also seemed pretty clear he had married the wrong woman. If we all kept to our own corners it was easier for everyone.”

After only a few years of marriage, their father dies and leaves the house and business to Andrea who repays his memory by putting both Maeve and Danny out, to never set foot in their home again. This starts an obsessive periodic pilgrimage for Danny and Maeve where they return to the street to sit in a car parked across from the Dutch House and gaze at it recalling memories and wondering how life would have panned out – if only. The emotional baggage they carry drives them forward but also restricts their successes and paths taken. The psychological burden of seeking happiness and fulfilment, while tied to past commitments and motivations is cleverly layered throughout the story.

I didn’t feel any great pace in the novel and at times wished it would move along in a more compelling rate. The house, while a connecting point, didn’t really have any character and increasingly the story is told away from it. It may be suggested that the house is the central aspect of the story but I would disagree feeling it more appropriate to consider the deep, caring, loving and supportive relationship between a brother and sister growing up with only each other to depend on.

I would recommend this book and I’d like to thank Bloomsbury Publishing and NetGalley for providing me with an early ARC copy in return for an honest review.

This is a beautiful novel; I’ve never read Ann Patchett before and took this on recommendation, and am so glad i did. Whilst ostensibly about the titular Dutch house, this is a tale of the family who loved there, their lives, betrayals, loves, obsessions, the nature of familiar love and societal duty.... i found myself completely immersed and firmly believed every character and their motivation.