The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
(Format used for this read: Audiobook)
This review will have a LOT less swearing than my last one.
Because I actually liked this book and it was not in the LEAST bit trash in any form🤣
I realize when I dislike books I get SUPER hostile about them…so I think my reviews on THOSE books are always a bit more…ummmmm heated.
So no need for you to clutch your pearls or try to skim over words as much this go round.
You’re welcome. LOL
ANYWAY>>>>>
This book was another book that has been recommended to me by eleventy bagillion people.
This book was another book that was on my TBR list in my phone…that also has eleventy bagillion books I “have to” read one day. 🤣
(No kidding about how many are on there, yall. That note is freakin’ ENDLESS!)
When I got together last month with my Read The Damn Book club gals, (that name is still EVERYTHING, isn’t it? Lauren and Katrina, yall are FOREVER the bomb for coming up with that one!) I took out that ginormous list to as we were figuring out what our next read should be.
I saw this one, recommended it, AND none of us had read it….amazing feat in a group filled with ladies who read as much as they breathe oxygen.
We all looked up the summary, saw the library and other reading apps had access to it, and BOOM.
Got our pick for this month.
I know I have let yall in before on how our selection process can get HELLA lengthy…but this was a WAY shorter process than usual. 🤣
Here is the official summary:
“At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves.
The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another. It is this unshakeable bond between them that both saves their lives and thwarts their futures.
Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House is a dark fairy tale about two smart people who cannot overcome their past. Despite every outward sign of success, Danny and Maeve are only truly comfortable when they’re together. Throughout their lives they return to the well-worn story of what they’ve lost with humor and rage. But when at last they’re forced to confront the people who left them behind, the relationship between an indulged brother and his ever-protective sister is finally tested.”
Not only did many people tell me to read this book, many of them ALSO suggested I listen to the audiobook because the narration is tremendous.
The narrator is Tom Hanks.
And yall, he does a lovely job. His voice is just so appropriate for the story….I can’t pinpoint exactly why, but it just FITS in that perfect storyteller way.
ALTHOUGH….there was *one* thing……
I have to admit that it was tough for me to visualize the characters in my mind because his voice is just so distinguishable…he’s just so TOM HANKS like, you know?
So the problem I had was this: instead of imagining Danny, Maeve and all the other characters as the author intended us to, what I kept seeing was Tom Hanks….. sitting in a sound booth, holding this book, and reading into a microphone. 🤣
I kept having to tell my brain “FOCUS! See THEM….not HIM!” 🤣
Even though that struggle kept happening to me chapter after chapter, I still think Tom Hanks was a stellar selection to narrate this audiobook. Well done 🙌
This story was about family relationships…about the love between siblings, about the roles we play by birth and by circumstance and by choice, about parental influence physically and emotionally, and about how all these things make us who we are.
Danny and Maeve have a unique relationship….they are closer to each other than anyone else in the world, mostly because the experiences they endured together as they grew up. The trauma from their mom leaving and their dad being emotionally distant binds them together.
Maeve then becomes more of a mother figure to Danny than an older sister, which she encompasses with love but also with a touch of bitterness. They are drawn even closer still when their father remarries, then dies and their stepmother is just AWFUL to them.
Parts of Danny and Maeve’s relationship reminded me of me and my own older sister’s relationship. The characters are 7 years apart in age, which is the same age distance we have.
My sister and I experienced trauma and tough times together growing up that nobody else can truly “get”….we are the only person in the entire world who can truly share in some of those complicated experiences and layered emotions….just like the dynamic between Maeve and Danny.
My older sister protected me, tended to me, and cared for me at times when our dad was dead and our mom wasn’t there due to work or other things….just like Maeve did for Danny.
My sister and I do not have the “tell each other everything” type of deep connection that these two characters do in this story….but we do have the deep love.
Even though this story is fictional, it made me think of real life…and how our full adult selves are formed. I think sometimes that the hard and difficult times we go thru as children have more weight and profound effect on who we become as adults than the easy and joyful times. The love and care we receive or do not receive during those times, the help, the resources, the healing we experience or do not experience….THAT I feel is what forms us the most in our deepest core as we age. You see this in these characters and as their life progresses thru the pages.
Like so many books do to me, this one had me wondering too about all the different things that make people do AWFUL things to others…are they inflicting pain and trauma on others because they have also gone thru pain and trauma inflicted on them??
This is a story about the pain we carry with us and the peace we steadily long for….how we want to forgive those that hurt us, how badly we want to move past it and be better than it… but we just can’t seem to do it. When we finally do, the healing we have been waiting for doesn’t always show up.
I liked how the story went back and forth between multiple time periods, showing how events in early childhood years are interwoven to older adult years…and vice versa.
Another thing that I found interesting in this story was the examination of the connection and attachment we have to physical houses….how we still remember things about our houses even many years later. What is it that makes a building a true “home” and not just a place that we live in?
It made me remember an old Amy Grant song called “If These Walls Could Speak”. When I was in college, my sorority sang our own little version of this song during Rush and it ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS made me cry huge BUCKETS of tears.
I sobbed because I had such heartfelt memories in the walls of that sorority house with cherished sisters (say what yall want about sororities and much of it is probably true…BUT much of it isn’t. I can say with complete honesty I had a WONDERFUL experience in mine and am so grateful for those women even now a bagillion years later💗)
But that song also made me have flashbacks to my own childhood home….good things. bad things and all things in between.
Take a listen to this ditty if ya wanna know what I’m talking about. I forgot that Amy Grant isn’t really THAT great of a singer 😬 so you may cry for other reasons….but just try to listen to the lyrics, mmmmkay.
I am gonna tell yall right now I cried BIG…again….just listening to this shit when I was typing the link for this blog entry.
Because now as an adult….and ESPECIALLY as a military family….I think of all the memories we have in all the different houses we have lived in. And all the memories my kiddos have in those houses. That connection to those buildings all has to do with what was being lived amongst those walls…THAT is what made it a home.
The Dutch House kept drawing Maeve and Danny back not because they longed for the building, but because they longed for the HOME. Even though it was messed up and kinda painful and chaotic….they kept desiring the feeling of HOME they had there. Or for the feeling of home they WANTED to have there.
We can all relate to that in some way, shape or form.
So….
This was an enjoyable fiction book. Not epically life changing, but just a damn good read.
It is one that when you finish, you are all like “That was a good book.” That’s it. Plain and simple. Yeah for me. On to the next.
But THEN, in the days that follow, you continue to think about it…you process it more and more….and it stays with you. And the better it becomes.
Do yall know what I mean?
I don’t know what that literary phenomenon is called…but whatever it is, this book has it.