Insisting that she has “no business in a place like that, all those fireplaces and staircases, all those people waiting on me”, she flees to help the destitute in India. James Walton; 1 October 2019 • 7:00am. Because Danny is by design a clueless, tight-lipped character, it isn't clear that this was the right choice; an omniscient third person narration might have been a better way to get deeper inside him. The panes of glass that surrounded the glass front doors were as big as storefront windows and held in place by wrought-iron vines. reviewed by Jackie Thomas-Kennedy. Check. “Seen from certain vantage points of distance, it appeared to float several inches above the hill it sat on. Home is the eponymous Dutch House, a 1922 mansion outside Philadelphia that their father, Cyril, a real estate mogul, bought fully furnished in an estate sale as a surprise for his wife in 1946, when Maeve was 5. The wicked stepmother's arrival, even more than their mother's ghosting, marks the end of Danny and Maeve's childhood. Danny’s eventual accommodation of the past, and of his family’s choices, seems both inevitable and earned. "The problem, I wanted to say, was that I was asleep to the world. Patchett's eighth novel is a paradise lost tale dusted with a sprinkling of 'Cinderella,' 'The Little Princess' and 'Hansel and Gretel.'. Read 22,555 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. Cyril Conroy is a hard-up but ambitious property developer with a talent for life-changing surprises. Danny survives the loss of his mother because his sister – loving, resourceful Maeve, vividly drawn by Patchett – steps into the breach: “Maeve was there, with her red coat and her black hair, standing at the bottom of the stairs, the white marble floor with the little black squares.” She’s Snow White or Red Riding Hood as Vermeer might have painted her. “We look back through the lens of what we know now,” he decides, “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.” The glass-walled Dutch House may be open to view, but the truth it contains is obscured. The second of Patchett’s books that I’ve read, it had been creeping toward the top of my book pile during the festive season, before I finally picked it up mid-way through the first week in January. The Dutch House by Ann Patchett is published by Bloomsbury (RRP £18.99) To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. And if Maeve is a substitute mother then she’s in some ways as compromised a figure as Elna and Andrea, demanding her own relentless form of sacrifice in the guise of Danny’s medical studies. He acquires the house in 1946 when the Van Hoebeeks go bankrupt, taking possession not only of the building but of its servants and sumptuous contents, and installing his wife, Elna, and children, Maeve and Danny, in their ready-made new existence overnight. James said that the house of fiction has “not one window, but a million”, depending on who is looking at the scene, and Patchett’s elegantly constructed narrative often reads like a dramatisation of this idea. Lost mother? We know what happens next: once their stepmother has taken possession, Maeve and Danny will be systematically pushed out. Cyril is revealed as weak and neglectful, a man who never really liked children, even his own. Their rags-to-riches move from a rental “the size of a postage stamp” to the Dutch House with its treasures spells the beginning of the end of the marriage. Patchett's eighth novel is a paradise lost tale dusted with a sprinkling of Cinderella, The Little Princess and Hansel and Gretel. For years after they are banished from the Dutch House, Maeve and Danny make a ritual of parking outside their former home to watch the comings and goings of Andrea and their stepsisters through its vast windows. The Dutch House is also about obsessive nostalgia. Both mythic and naturalistic, Patchett’s story of children expelled from the mansion of their childhood by an evil stepmother showcases her great skill, Ann Patchett: ‘My best kiss? The important thing is that the Dutch House in the book conjures up that feeling. “Do you think it’s possible to ever see the past as it actually was?” asks Danny, now in college, where Maeve forces him to endure years of expensive medical training simply to drain the educational fund that would otherwise devolve to Andrea’s daughters. Stalwart and sceptical housekeeper? I’ve taken bits and pieces from great houses I’ve been in over my life and run those details together — carved wooden panels, the dining room ceiling, a tiny kitchen in a grand house, the staircase, the ability to see through certain houses. Except that, in the world of The Dutch House, it almost is. But the question of what, if any, kind of reconciliation with the past might still be achieved after such a profound betrayal gives The Dutch House an irresistible narrative drive. The Dutch House (Harper), Ann Patchett’s masterful eighth novel, is a fierce, intimate, and unstoppably readable saga of family life. The Dutch House by Ann Patchett is published by Bloomsbury (RRP £18.99) To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Check that, too. Like art, healing is not for everyone. The house in Ann Patchett’s eighth novel is the last word in desirable real estate. I love … Continue reading "Review: The Dutch House – Ann Patchett" “The point was it had to be done.” And besides, by middle age he “had the idea that all of the hard things had already happened”: as always, Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature.