The Dutch House - Ann Patchett

'Ann Patchett just gets better and better ... With more than a nod to Henry James , The Dutch House is quietly devastating, often mysterious and rather beautiful in its effortlessly readable melancholy' ObserverLonglisted for the Women's Prize 2020*The Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller and a 'Book of the Year' 2019*Selected as Book of the Year in The Times, Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Washington Post, Herald and Good Housekeeping A heart-wrenching new novel of the unbreakable bond between a brother and sister, their childhood home, and a past that will not let them go - from the Number One New York Times bestselling author of Bel Canto and Commonwealth"'Do you think it's possible to ever see the past as it actually was?' I asked my sister. We were sitting in her car, parked in front of the Dutch House in the broad daylight of early summer." 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.
Told across the decades with Ann Patchett's inimitable blend of humour, rage and heartbreak, The Dutch House is a book for our times; of family, love, loss, and
the powerful bonds of place and time that magnetize and repel us for our whole lives._____Reviews for The Dutch House:'The book of the autumn
Her finest novel yet' Sunday Times 'A wonderful hypnotic masterpiece of a novel. The best book I've read in years' Rosamund Lupton'What a spectacular novel. A masterpiece, I'd say' Cathy Rentzenbrink'Indelibly poignant' Observer'One of my top favourite contemporary writers. There isn't a book of hers that I haven't put down at the end and been haunted by for weeks after' Gillian Anderson'The buzz around The Dutch House is totally justified. Her best yet, which is saying something' John Boyne

Ann Patchett is the author of eight novels and three works of non-fiction. Her most recent novel The Dutch House was a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller, and longlisted for the 2020 Women's Prize. In 2002 she won the Orange Prize for Fiction with Bel Canto, a prize she has also twice been shortlisted for with The Magician's Assistant in 1998 and State of Wonder in 2012. She is also the winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2012. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. She is the co-owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee, where she lives with her husband, Karl.

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

A gloriously immersive family saga about lost inheritance
Guardian, Books of the Year

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 vicissitudes of life in a step-family unfold over five decades … A moving portrait of an unusual house and the unhappy family living in it
The Times, Book of the Year

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
Financial Times - Catherine Taylor

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

One of the most celebrated novelists of our times … But it is her new book, widely billed a one of this autumn's best new reads, where she truly comes into her own
Sunday Times Magazine

A family story full of love and pain and insight
Herald, Books of the Year

Impeccably fine … A thoughtful, quietly profound book
i paper

The Dutch House offers … A simultaneous awareness of human fragility and human resilience
Daily Telegraph

As always, Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life, rather than literature
Times Literary Supplement, Books of the Year

She uses her signature blend of wry humour, rage and regret in a tale of siblings who cannot escape the shadow of their childhood home
i

Masterly
The Times

An outstanding novel, wryly funny, heart-breakingly sad and entirely engrossing
S Magazine - Eithne Farry

We're calling it now: The Dutch House will be the book of the autumn ... Her finest novel yet
Sunday Times

Few novelists today combine such a forensic eye with an acute and humane understanding of human nature. I would read Ann Patchett's shopping list
Jojo Moyes

Patchett is a master at pacing and detail … The question of what makes a home pervades this gripping book
New Statesman - Erica Wagner

She rivals Tyler for emotional acuity
Metro - Anthony Cummins

Ann Patchett writes novels that quietly and thoroughly devastate the reader - in a good way. Her new novel is no exception
Red

Patchett well deserves her reputation for compelling novels, and The Dutch House is her most enthralling yet
Vogue

What a spectacular novel. A masterpiece, I'd say
Cathy Rentzenbrink

Wise and funny and unwraps the complexities of human beings with heartbreaking tenderness. I love this book
Rene Knight

Bliss
Nigella Lawson

The buzz around The Dutch House is totally justified. Her best yet, which is saying something
John Boyne

If there's a better, more poignant or involving novel than The Dutch House published this year, I will be very, very surprised
Andrew Holgate

A dark modern fairy tale, a delicately woven portrait of a family in flux
Evening Standard

The plot is gentle but firm while Patchett's prose dazzles with detail and nuance, spinning a story that tucks itself inside your heart
i paper

Wonderfully astute ... Patchett's books … have a sly comic undertow
Mail on Sunday - Craig Brown

A marvellously romantic and evocative novel about the nostalgic pull of a lost home … Beautifully written and often tender … That rare thing: a novel which reveals greater riches on a second reading
Spectator - Cressida Connolly