’m surprised by the high marks and reviews  for this novel , nothing happens !! Admittedly it is easy to read and the pages flow and the writing is superb but the passive main character - Danny , Started to irritate me , should he shouldn’t  he ..... blah blah blah , not for me, perhaps I should listen to the audio book narrated by the brilliant Tom Hank’s instead . Can’t deny the writing is excellent but I personal prefer a book that packs and punch , this is more of a gentle character lead read.

A modern retelling of the Hansel and Gretel fairy tale, except in this version there’s not a house in the woods, but a mansion in the Philadelphia suburbs. More than that, this is a love story between a brother and a sister. It showcases the sacrifices the sister makes to help her brother become successful, and how the bond they have rises above the evil machinations of their stepmother. Beautifully written. I have given this book to many friends and family and implored them to read it.

I love this and Ann Patchett's books so much I've had to buy a physical copy because this baby will be revisited. Thank you for another wonderful book.

Ann Patchett's writing really pulled me in. 
Danny and Maeve live with their father in the dutch House, in Pennsylvania. Narrated by Danny, he captures his relationship with his sister, and how both their lives change so much when their father brings home Andrea. Slowly but surely, Andrea pushes the siblings aside, and then ultimately out of the house when thier father passes away.
Both subtle and complex, this is a narrative that will draw you in.

A sweeping narrative of a family living in the Dutch House - so called because of the former owners, who came from the Netherlands and decorated its interior in the Dutch style. Danny, the protagonist, grew up there with his family. The story is really about him and his older sister Maeve, a story of their strong love and connection that grew through the trials they experienced. 

One I wish I’d read with my bookclub as there would some interesting themes/characters to discuss. 

Four and a half stars.

I ended up buying a Hardback copy and it is beautiful! A brilliant tale of the true meaning of home, one of my favourite novels I’ve read this year!

I can't recommend this book enough!  It's about a family, spanning five decades of love, betrayal, confusion, duty and so much more. The style of writing is beautiful, it's  so descriptive and has  such  well observed turns of phrases, on every page! I wanted to sit down and just keep reading this book, and didn't want it to end.  It has a lovely warmth to it. That's the only way I can describe it. Wonderful.

This book is incredible. The author does an amazing job of exploring their characters lives and their obligations and wants. I loved every page and was fully immersed in the book from start to finish.

This is the first time I've read Ann Patchett since reading State of Wonder over a decade ago, so I'd sort of forgotten what to expect from her as a writer. I have seen mixed reviews of The Dutch House, with expectations being sky high and not always being met. Being a lover of family sagas that span many years and are filled with interesting characters, this ticked a lot of boxes for me. I think I'm still looking for something to fill The Cazalet Chronicles hole in my heart and whilst this isn't that, I still found it highly, highly enjoyable. Patchett, to me, is a more cerebral (if less human) Meg Wolitzer, and this book found me drawing comparisons to The Interestings in terms of scope of time and the intricacies of the characters drawn within. I really enjoyed it, but it hasn't made me want to dive into the rest of Patchett's back catalogue for some reason.

This is a difficult book to review, without giving you huge spoilers. It is about Danny who narrates in the first person who is telling us about his childhood in the Dutch House of the title. He and his sister are both haunted by the house and the life they could have had. Their mother left when Danny was a baby and her loss haunted his entire life. Their stepmother betrays them and they both have to grow up fast. I almost gave it five stars but it does jump around in time a bit too much for my liking.

The Dutch House is the story of brother and sister, Danny and Maeve. We follow their story from early childhood to middle age and learn about their relationships with their parents and the house they grew  up in, The Dutch House.
I had mixed feelings about this book, I really enjoyed the story and the characters  of Maeve and Danny were well written and developed, I felt invested in both of them.
The timeline jumps back and forward a lot which was quite confusing at times, it didn’t seem to follow any pattern. 
The ending of the book felt rushed, some big events happened which were dealt with in only a few sentences, I would have like more time given to these events and perhaps less time to events that took place earlier in the book. I would also liked to have seen the character of Mr Otterson further developed (Maeve’s boss), he seemed to be a really important presence in her life yet we never found out anything about him.
Overall it was a good story that I enjoyed reading  but I felt it could have been better written.

This book really pushed me out of my comfort zone as my typical go to book is mystery/thriller - The Dutch House couldn’t be further from this. It’s a family saga and the book begins after the end of WW2. It centres around two main characters, Danny and Maeve, and the impact The Dutch House has on them. Told from the view point of Danny, we experience all the heartache and loss, abandonment and bereavement as well as some of the happier moments he goes through in this life.

This book’s major strength and selling point is the way Ann Patchett brings the characters to life. Her characterisation is amazing, and you feel the sadness, happiness and utter rage that the main characters feel. Danny and Maeve, as well as the others, literally jump off the page at you! 

There are no twists and turns in this books, no great excitement but still it draws you in and infuriates you all at once. There were times when I felt so frustrated with the characters and wanted to shake them, but at other points you feel utter sadness at the heartache and abandonment they faced. Whilst it is quite slow paced at times, the writing completely takes you on a ride that you just want to keep on until the end.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC.

I'm not sure I've read much of Ann Patchett's other work but I'll definitely be going back to check out her previous books. It's hard to say what this book is about other than just life - family, finding a job you enjoy, dealing with childhood trauma - but Patchett's writing makes the subject thoroughly engaging and I didn't want to put it down. At the centre of the novel is the Dutch House itself, a place that seems to define the lives of everyone who comes into contact with it. It's definitely a character in its own right, and I now want to travel to Pennsylvania just to find somewhere that looks like it and sit outside in my car wondering about the lives of the people within.

I decided to read The Dutch House by Ann Patchett as so many other bloggers have written glowing reviews, but I wasn’t as keen on it as others. Its about a dysfunctional family.  The Conroys, Danny, Maeve and their mother, Elna and father, Cyril  who lived in the Dutch House, but when Danny was just three his mother left home.  Cyril remarried, and his second wife, Andrea, the mother of two young girls, was the epitome of the  wicked stepmother. When their father dies he leaves the Dutch House, to Andrea.  She shows her true  colours and insists Danny and Maeve have to move out of their home. The house itself is described in detail. It was built by a Dutch couple called VanHoebeek in 1922 when it was in the open country just outside Philadelphia and their presence is still a strong influence on  the Conroy family.

The novel moves backwards and forwards in time, from 1946 to the present, and at times I was not sure what happened when (probably my lack of concentration caused my confusion). Danny and Maeve are both obsessed with the house, to the detriment of their own lives. Their mother, Elna meanwhile had a totally different reaction to the house, never liking it and I was intrigued about her – what made her leave her children – and I was suspicious about that had happened to her and even if she was she still alive. The pain her children felt when she left to be replaced by a wicked stepmother is immense. But it is the loss of their inheritance rather than the loss of their mother, that has left them with bitterness, and anger.

I thought the book began well, but somewhere in the middle and definitely towards the end I did get rather bored with the story, so much so that I was relieved to finish it. It was not just such a good choice of book for me – or maybe it was the wrong time for me to read it.

Books about houses are always special. When they have secrets, hearts and souls they have as much impact on folk as breathing humans do. The Dutch House is no exception.

This isn't a castle or a grand stately home steeped in history like some, but a (relatively) modern and beautiful piece of architecture, with large windows and gardens. For those who lived there it represents success and failure, wealth and poverty, family, forgiveness and abandonment. For the narrator of the story it is the place where he lost his mother but found a strong bond with a  mother-like figure in his older sister. He also faced rejection, expectation and ambition.

The house represents different things for the family who grew up in it and, even after they leave, the Dutch House  still has a nostalgic pull for some and a reminder of things others would rather forget. There is also a lot of self-pity, possessiveness and jealousy. Built by Dutch immigrants who left their personal possessions behind, it was bought by a self-made man in his shrewdness just after the Second world War. His wife didn't like the house and was often elsewhere, leaving behind her two children in the care of their loyal staff, until she finally left for good and the husband remarried. The second wife loves the house but not his children.

A family saga, that covers a few decades and generally easy to read. (A minor bugbear is that twice the expression 'he could care less' is used instead of 'he could not care less'). Overall this is the story of two siblings who stick with each other throughout the trials of life, a bit like Hansel and Gretel being sucked in towards the alluring gingerbread house with the wicked stepmother ready to eat them. Recommended. 
​

I really enjoyed this book. I love stories about families and how they interact. I felt sorry for Danny and Maeve when they had to leave The Dutch House but was impressed with how they coped with everything. I don’t think I was surprised by the ending - I suspected The Dutch House would come back to them. I thought their mother would turn up again in their lives but I was surprised at how Maeve reacted to it. 
I would recommend this book to customers and our book club is reading it after I recommended it.

Fabulous! A  modern fairy tale.... Books like this make a bookseller's job easy! AND Tom Hanks narrating the audio, honestly, why reason have you got NOT to listen/read this book!

I really enjoyed this book. Strong characters and an unconventional family. As always by this author, this book is a very well-written family drama. Recommended.

Captivating from the first page. We learn about siblings Maeve and Danny, and how they support each other when their mother abandons them and, some time later, their father dies. 
Their father, Cyril, remarried Andrea when Elna leaves him.  His new wife doesn’t take to Maeve and Danny and when their father dies she leaves them to their own devices and refuses to have them back in the house. 
The house is, of course, central to the story as it is the reason for their parents divorce which is the catalyst for everything that follows. Everyone who has lived there has strong feelings about it, some good, some bad. 
Beautifully written with wonderful descriptions. I felt like I was there.
The cover was what drew my attention to this lovely book. I’m so glad I read it. 
Thank you to Ann Patchett, Net Galley and the publisher, Bloomsbury, for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I’ve been aware of Ann Patchett’s books for years without ever thinking that I might enjoy them, but this one sounded appealing to me so I thought I would give it a try. I’m glad I did because I loved it – it just shows how wrong you can be about an author!

The Dutch House is the story of brother and sister Danny and Maeve Conroy, and their obsession with the house in Philadelphia in which they grew up. It’s no ordinary house; named for the nationality of the people who built it in the 1920s, the Van Hoebeeks, the Dutch House is an architectural wonder with ornate floors and ceilings and luxurious furnishings. When Cyril Conroy purchases it in the 1940s, he intends it to be a wonderful surprise for his family. However, his wife, Elna, comes to hate the house and everything it represents. For her, it is symbolic of all the inequality in the world – how can it be fair for some people to have so much and others so little? She begins to spend increasingly longer periods of time away from the house, until one day she leaves and doesn’t come back.

Maeve and Danny are devastated by their mother’s sudden and unexplained disappearance, but things quickly become worse when Cyril marries again and his new wife, Andrea, arrives at the Dutch House with her two young daughters. Andrea makes it clear that she has no time for her stepchildren and doesn’t want them in her life so, when Cyril dies a few years later, she throws them out of the Dutch House and leaves them to make their own way in the world.

For the rest of their lives, Danny and Maeve will struggle to move on and let go of the past. They will sit outside the Dutch House, looking through the gates and wondering who lives there now. They will let the events of their childhood influence the career paths they follow and put strain on their future relationships. And they will never forget that Andrea is to blame for all of this.

You could describe this as a book about a house, but I think of it more as a book about people and the connections between them…in particular, the relationship between a brother and a sister. When they find themselves cast out and alone in the world, Danny and Maeve have no one else they can rely on but each other; Maeve, who is seven years older, takes on the role of mother, overseeing Danny’s education and making sacrifices for him, despite struggling with her own health problems. The bond between them is deep and unbreakable and although there are times when it seems to restrict them from doing things they really want to do and times when it gets in the way of their other relationships, I still found it very moving.

The novel is narrated entirely by Danny and as he is only a small child when his mother leaves and still just a teenager when he is forced out of the Dutch House, there’s a sense that some of the information he is giving us may be slightly unreliable. It is only later in life, as he sits in the car outside the house reminiscing with Maeve, that certain things become clear to him and start to make more sense. As the story progresses towards its end the full picture emerges and we begin to wonder ‘what if’? What if, instead of always staying in the car, Danny and Maeve had gone and knocked on the door of the Dutch House one day? What if they had tried to contact Andrea and speak to her as adults – could they have cleared the air and moved on with their lives? What if they had made more effort to find their mother and had asked her why she walked out on them as children? They will never know the answers to these questions, but I’m sure we all have similar thoughts about our own lives – things we could have done differently or not done at all.

I loved this book and will now have to read Ann Patchett’s earlier books, which I had dismissed as not for me!