"The Dutch House" by Ann Patchett

Ann Patchett has a bookstore just outside of Nashville, TN, a fact that my sister-in-law Donna tossed at me last year when I was spending some time in the south.  I think about that often, the fact that I should have visited that bookstore when I was less than ten miles from it last March. (Donna, if I go back to the south this spring, Parnassus Bookstore is on my list. Come with me?)

I just, fifteen minutes ago, finished "The Dutch House."  Being a long time fan of Patchett's books, there isn't a lot I can say that will be different than any other book reviewer's take on this book.  As a whole, it is so simple and yet so complex. The characters are kids at the beginning, aging adults at the end but the fact of their growing up seems negligible for most of the book because, like many of us mortals, their past and their childhood  define them into their advancing age. In fact, for some time, they are stuck in the past and try to revisit it over and over again.

The synopsis is simple: two kids grow up in a huge, ostentatious house, one that their father loves and their mother hates.  The mother eventually leaves and dies and another woman comes in and marries their father. After a few years the father dies, the stepmother takes charge and the two kids leave and have other lives. Then, years later, some other things happen and history snakes back on itself.

Well, that's not a good version but Patchett is all about the characters and their reactions to things and their putting stuff behind them and trying to carry on. But the past is always there.  (As Faulkner said: The past is never dead. It's not even past.)

The characters are the thing in this novel. Maeve and her brother Danny are joined at the hip because they are all they have. Their bond is strong and yet... lacking something.  That something shows up.  And then, how strong is that bond, really?

It's a really good book with some really good, insightful lines:
We had stepped into the river that takes you forward.  

I had not been born with an imagination large enough to encompass this moment.

I could tell the way we felt was exactly the same, like we had nearly drowned and then been fished from the water at the last possible minute. We had lived without expecting to live. 

Ann Patchett is not just a great writer but an excellent painter of character.  Whether we like the character or not isn't a concern of hers. That the character is real, that's definitely one of her priorities, and in "The Dutch House" the characters are real.  About 50 pages into it, I was a little worried..... I thought I could see where the story was going and I didn't like that path.  Well, poor pitiful me. Patchett's characters take different roads, whether they want to or not, and they are slapped in the face by changes they did not expect and so was I. 

Again, Ann Patchett has written a story about family, about connection, about compromise and forgiving and tolerance. And she does it with so much grace and talent.  Wow.  Read it and report back.