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Revision as of 15:52, 29 August 2020
, 15:52, 29 August 2020no edit summary
Then Cyril Conroy brings Andrea to the Dutch House and another dysfunctional relationship is brought into the family. There doesn't seem to be any great affection there and Maeve and Danny speculate that their father eventually married Andrea because he didn't know how to get her to leave the house, Andrea brought two children with her and we see her less-than-subtle manoeuvring to ensure that Norma and Bright take precedence - and Maeve's retaliations to make certain that Danny gets the lion's share of the educational funds available. The result of this is that Danny qualifies as a doctor despite the fact that his heart is in residential development. Maeve sums up the relationship between the siblings and their father when they have an almost-illicit meal on their own with him ''as if we had once been a unit instead of just a circumstance''.
Andrea's defining move was to force Maeve and Danny to leave the Dutch House. In the decades which followed they would revisit the property regularly, but only to sit outside in Maeve's car, speculating what was going on inside and remembering the times they had spent there. ''Do you think it's possible to ever see the past as it actually was?'' Danny asked his sister and we never can as we revisit our memories through the lense lens of what we know now. Of course, the main point of which they both know so little is what happened to their mother: her absence has been a more powerful influence on their lives than any presence they have known.
I'm always nervous of books which are surrounded with as much hype as ''The Dutch House'' has attracted, but on this occasion , it is totally justified. It's been called 'the book of the autumn' but I'd go further and say that for me it's the book of the year. No one conveys aging ageing in quite the way that Ann Patchett has mastered. We follow Danny and Maeve through more than four decades without ever experiencing a disconcerting jump as the years pass. You might occasionally suspect that Maeve is a little domineering, that Danny can be just a bit malleable, but the story is hypnotic and compelling. Reading the book was pure joy and it was hard not to turn back to the beginning and start again when I got to the last page.
I'd like to thank the publishers for sending a copy to the Bookbag.
