It’s told from the perspective of the youngest child, Danny, and readers will come to love him and his sister, Maeve, and the Dutch House itself, which remains, throughout the story, a silent character of its own.įans of Ann Patchett will not be disappointed in her new novel about the unwavering adoration between Danny and Maeve, and the trials they are forced to overcome together. The story, which spans five decades, is a warm, charming, and sometimes heartbreaking story of the friendship and strains that can exist between two siblings who are brought closer together in the face of misfortune. Their love for their former home and their antipathy towards their stepmother gives the Conroy siblings ample reason to continue to visit the Dutch House in secret, observing the activities through the glass windows of their former home from the safety of their car. It begins in the late 1940s, when Cyril Conroy surprises his wife, Elna, with a glass mansion in the posh Philadelphia neighborhood of Elkins Park. Much like in a fairy tale, when Cyril dies young and suddenly, Andrea refuses to allow Danny and Maeve to continue living in the Dutch House. The Dutch House (Harper), Ann Patchett’s masterful eighth novel, is a fierce, intimate, and unstoppably readable saga of family life. Left alone to deal with their father’s emotionless connection, the two children come to depend on each other, a bond which is only strengthened by the arrival of Andrea, their new stepmother, and her two young daughters.

The pressure of such an extravagant home is too much for Cyril’s wife, Elna, who leaves the house behind-along with her husband and their two young children, Danny and Maeve. Something about the way Ann Patchett presents her central character of Danny Conroy in her new novel The Dutch House hooked me to his consciousness. At the end of World War II, Cyril Conroy buys the Dutch House, a large, glass house on the outskirts of Philadelphia formerly owned by the VanHoebeeks, whose portraits still grace the walls. There are some novels where I instantly feel connected to the narrator as if he were an old friend. it was amazing There are some novels where I instantly feel connected to the narrator as if he were an old friend.

Review the dutch house