Rating:  ☆☆☆1/2

Recommended by:  Clare Telleen

Author:   Ann Patchett

Genre:   Fiction, Historical Fiction

337 pages, published September 24, 2019

Reading Format:  Audio Book on Overdrive

Summary

The Dutch House is a book about a family that purchases an unusual and luxurious estate in the suburbs of Philadelphia in the late 1940’s.  The house proves to be the undoing of the family.  The story is told by the son Danny, as he and his older sister Maeve are exiled from the Dutch house by their stepmother after their father unexpectedly dies.  Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House tells the story of Danny and Maeve as they struggle to rise above their past.

Quotes 

“I see the past as it actually was,” Maeve said. She was looking at the trees.  But we 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.”

 

“Do you think it’s possible to ever see the past as it actually was?”

 

“And so I made the decision to change. It might seem like change was impossible, given my nature and my age, but I understood exactly what there was to lose. It was chemistry all over again. The point wasn’t whether or not I liked it. The point was it had to be done.”

 

“The dinner was a huge production, with kids stashed in the den to eat off card tables like a collection of understudies who dreamed of one day breaking into the dining room.”

 

“Fluffy always said there was no greater luxury for a woman than to have a window over the sink.”

 

“Thinking about the past impeded my efforts to be decent in the present.”

 

“The biggest lie in business is that it takes money to make money, remember that. You gotta be smart, have a plan, pay attention to what’s going on around you. None of that costs a dime.”

 

“We were all so young, you know. We were still our best selves.”

 

“That night in my sister’s bed I stared at the ceiling and felt the true loss of our father. Not his money or his house, but the man I sat next to in the car. He had protected me from the world so completely that I had no idea what the world was capable of. I had never thought about him as a child. I had never asked him about the war. I had only seen him as my father, and as my father I had judged him. There was nothing to do about that now but add it to the catalog of my mistakes.”

 

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

 

“There would never been an end to all the things I wished I’d asked my father.”

 

“Celeste and I had made a few halfhearted attempts to get the kids to church when they were young, and then we gave up and left them in bed. In the city of constant stimulation, we had failed to give them the opportunity to develop strong inner lives for those occasions when they would find themselves sitting through the second act of The Nutcracker.”

 

“You have to serve those who need to be served, not just the ones who make you feel good about yourself.”

 

“Maeve, speak up. Don’t expect that anyone will do you the favor of listening if you don’t trouble yourself to use your voice.”

My Take

I listened to the audio version of The Dutch House and really enjoyed the narration by Tom Hanks.  I have read several books by Ann Patchett (Commonwealth and State of Wonder) and have a lot of respect for her as a writer.  The Dutch House tells a compelling story about a brother and sister and how they cope with some really bad curve balls thrown at them by life.