I may be biased because I love everything that Ann Patchett writes, so there was no doubt in my mind I would like The Dutch House. I knew nothing about it when I picked it up and I couldn't put it down for 3 days, Ann Patchett does a wonderful job weaving difficult family relationships through decades that all center around a house.

Ann Patchett pulls the reader into the lives of Danny and Maeve and their dependency on each other when their family falls apart.

As I was reading Dutch House I started thinking about what makes a novel great, heads above all others. Characters whom you care and think about even after you’ve finished the last page. A storyline that grabs from the first word and has you turning pages faster to see what’s going to happen, then slower because you don’t want the book to end. And maybe not as critical, but still important, especially in this novel, place, where the novel occurs, where it’s set. And although the locales in this novel are set in the Upper West Side, and off main-line Philly, it’s the House itself that is most important. Because the Dutch House is a character unto itself, and the driving force of much of what transpires in the life of Danny and his sister, Maeve, and those around them.
I think Dutch House brilliant. The best novel I’ve read in two years, and I read all the time. I lived in Nashville for years, where Ann Patchett resides, and on the mainline, and NY, and I loved how she described these areas spot on, and as an aside made me wonder how she nailed them so perfectly.
This is a deeply personal novel between a loving brother and older sister who grow up in Dutch House with their hard to please father, two loving servants who feel like family, and a mother who left them long ago. It’s all they know, this huge house with its many quirks, and life carries on until their father marries Andrea who moves in with her two young daughters.
I would give more than 5 stars if I could, and am telling everyone I know, read this novel and savor it.

Ann Patchett describes the life of a brother and sister who spend many hours focused on how their journies might have been different if they and those they loved and despised had not lived in The Dutch House. Alternately loved and seen as a prison of sorts, the three-story house shapes the lives of the characters, turning them away and calling them back in turn. How can a house designed to bring in the light turn so dark?

There is no doubt that Ann Patchett is one of our greatest novelists. The Dutch House proves, once again, that Patchett can entrance and engage the reader as she invites us into the lives of her characters.

This novel is narrated by Danny, struggling under the weight of being deserted by his mother while living with his aloof father. His life is held intact by the devotion of his older sister Maeve and the house staff.

It is the marriage of their father to the very wicked Andrea that becomes the catalyst for much of what happens to Danny and Maeve in the novel. She is so well drawn that she is the wretched symbol of step-parenting. Essentially, Andrea’s actions cause Danny and Maeve to become a lifelong unit, and this co-dependence will impact every event in their lives.

I think the concept of blended families will certainly be questioned after reading this. Clearly, the Conroys did not become The Brady Bunch.

I was totally mesmerized by the novel and will highly recommend it to all my book clubs. I know that there is so much I want to share with others, that I cannot wait for the discussions.

Though this is a sophisticated and thought provoking novel, much like RUN (an earlier Patchett novel), that it can have a place in libraries and reading groups of High School students since there are so many who are members of challenging families, and will identify with the family situation.

I truly thank Netgalley for giving me the gift of reading this extraordinary novel. It’s certainly on my best books of the year list.