The Dutch House: Nominated for the Women's Prize 2020 by Ann Patchett

An unforgettably powerful new novel of the indelible bond between two siblings, the house of their childhood, and a past that will not let them go - from the Number One New York Times bestselling author of Commonwealth and Bel Canto

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.

Review

A wonderful hypnotic masterpiece of a novel. The best book I've read in years -- Rosamund Lupton

One of my top favourite contemporary writers. I don't think that there's a book of hers that I haven't put down at the end and been haunted by for weeks after ― Gillian Anderson

The Dutch House is a novel that assures Patchett, alongside John Irving and Anne Tyler, a place as one of the foremost chroniclers of the burdens of emotional inventory and its central place in American lives -- Catherine Taylor ― Financial Times

Indelibly poignant in its long unspooling perspective on family life, The Dutch House brilliantly captures how time undoes all certainties ― Observer

An intimate and transporting novel . The Dutch House is a novel brimming with pain and tenderness in which Patchett's gifts as a storyteller are on full display . A searching, exquisitely wrenching novel about family, sacrifice and obsession ― Sunday Times

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bloomsbury Publishing; 1st edition (30 April 2020)

Language ‏ : ‎ English

Paperback ‏ : ‎ 352 pages

ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1526624060

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1526624062

Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 17.8 x 2.5 x 11.1 cm