The Dutch House

By Ann Patchett

Harper  2019

352 pages     Literary

The Dutch House is a novel whose impact stays with the reader long after she turns the last page. Or in the case of this reader, long after she turns off her Kindle.  It is an insightful look at what makes a family—is it blood, or is it care—and asks questions about the past and the impact of memory.

 Maeve and Danny Conroy are two children lost; they were lost when their mother leaves them and then further lost when their father marries a much younger woman with two daughters. Finally, they are lost when their father dies and they have only each other. Looming over it all is a house, the “Dutch House” as it is called.  

Danny Conroy tells the story through all the years, and the story weaves a bit from past to present and back again. Always, the story always  ends up at the Dutch House. Their father was a real estate entrepreneur. In his quest to buy and sell in the Philadelphia area in the mid-20^th century, he bought the Dutch House as a present for his wife. She hated the house; it was too big, too elaborate, too filled with someone else’s treasures. She finds herself lost  in the house, the marriage ends, and Mother leaves her children only to return when they are middle-aged adults. As Maeve says of their marriage, “Our father was a man who had never met his own wife.”

The house is named The Dutch House, because of its owners, the Van Hoebeek family. The street in front of the house is even named for the family. Nothing has changed in the house, the Van Hoebeek’s portraits are still over the mantle and all of their treasures remain in the house through all the decades of the story. When Danny and Maeve finely return to the inside of the home near the end of the book, they find the house exactly as they left it—immaculate and well-cared for by the same housekeeper that they knew and loved. It is then that Maeve is able to remove  the portrait that hung opposite the Van Hoebeek’s. It is a portrait of herself as a ten-year-old; thus, the cover of the book.

There is the aspect of the fairy tale to the narrative. Andrea (i.e. the wicked stepmother) marries the father and brings along her two daughters thus invoking a Cinderella-like aspect to the lives of Maeve and Danny. When the new step-family “invades” the Conroy family, Maeve is exiled to a third-floor bedroom, giving up her lovely room for her two step-sisters. She invokes The Little Princess, warning the girls that she will not be their servant. Finally, after they are kicked out of the house when their father dies, Danny and Maeve are always trying to get home, just like Hansel and Gretel.

However, the fairytale aspect of the narrative does not diminish the power of the story. It is, at its heart, about family—what makes family, who makes family, and why is family all there is. Also, it attempts to deal with the questions about how much the past determines our future. I had a discussion last night with a young woman who told me that her birth father was trying to get back into her life, and she wasn’t sure where to put all the feelings surrounding this issue. I wanted to tell her about Danny Conroy and all his conflicted feelings when his mother reentered his life. 

Patchett is an incredible writer. Over and over, I found myself underlining passages that were profound, meaningful, and incredibly well written. The NPR reviewer suggests that The Dutch House was written by an author “who embodies compassion.” Danny is so lost in his past, his mother’s leaving, his father’s seeming indifference, his exile from the Dutch House, that he has trouble living in the present, even as he has a wife and children. He continues to ask, “What kind of person leaves their kids?” long after he should have moved on. Yet, Patchett’s writing makes us cry out in compassion for Danny and his family. Give them some peace. Help them let go of the life they didn’t have. Help them move on.

Here is a good interview of Ann Patchett. The Dutch House appeared on many lists of the best books of 2019. I am sure that it will go on my list of best books of 2020.