Prompt #44 – A book you have always avoided reading

Back in lockdown of 2020, I took part in a Random Acts of Kindness book exchange. One of the books I received was The Dutch House by Ann Patchett which was all over bookstagram at the time. For some reason, I kept avoiding the book and it has sat on the shelf for five years.

What it’s about?

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.

In the economic boom following the Second World War, Cyril Conroy’s real estate investments take his family from poverty to enormous wealth. With it he buys the Dutch House, a lavish mansion in the Philadelphia suburbs. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves.

Danny Conroy grows up in the opulence of the Dutch House. Though his father is distant and his mother is absent, Danny has his beloved sister Maeve: Maeve, with her wall of black hair, her wit, her brilliance. The siblings grow and change as life plays out under the watchful eyes of the house’s former owners, in the frames of their oil paintings.

Then one day their father brings home Andrea, a new stepmother. Though they cannot know it, her arrival to the Dutch House sows the seed of the defining loss of Danny and Maeve’s lives: exiled from the house and tossed back into the poverty from which their family rose, Danny and Maeve have only each other to count on.

What I think:

I’m not sure why I avoided reading this for so long. I don’t find the cover particularly appealing and there is no real blurb to the book so perhaps it was that unknown quality. I am however, really pleased that I did.

This is a real slow burner that is all about character development.

The book begins with the arrival of Andrea. She moves into the Dutch House and becomes step-mother to Danny and Maeve. Bringing her two young daughters, she asserts her influence over the house and as events unfold exiles the Conroy children.

The house is really the centre of the novel. It’s a symbol of the Conroy’s wealth and success. Bought to secure their status after the war, the house is extravagant and filled with the furniture and portraits of the previous owners, the VanHoebeeks. Instead it brings the end of the Conroy’s marriage, leaving the children abandoned by their mother and raised by the housekeepers.

The house is also a symbol of loss and grief. When Andrea forces Danny and Maeve out of the house, following the untimely death of their father, they return to the house watching from the car to contemplate the life they have lost.

The legacy of the Dutch House is never far from the lives of Danny and Maeve as they grow older and have families of their own.

The novel is told from Danny’s perspective as he blends the past and the present, acknowledging the long shadow cast by a beautiful but haunted house.

I thoroughly enjoyed this story. The characters are complex and interesting, the story is compelling and  universal themes of love and loss, loyalty and forgiveness are rich and evocative. I’m so glad I finally picked this one up.