I loved this book by Ann Patchett so much!
The only book of hers I had read prior to this was Bel Canto, and while I liked it (and the opera) and recognized it was beautifully written, it wasn’t my favorite book, so I haven’t read anything of Patchett’s since then. I wasn’t going to read this one, either, but my book club elected to discuss it last month. It was the only book they nominated that was not readily available from my library because all the copies had holds on them, and I didn’t have time to wait, so I had to buy a copy from my local independent book store. Oh darn 😉
This book is very different from Bel Canto. It’s told from the perspective of a man named Danny Conroy, who grew up in a large house known as the Dutch House because it was built by a wealthy Dutch family named VanHoebeek. The VanHoebeek’s had made their money making cigarettes, had bought the land on which the house sat, as well as a whole bunch of land around it, and had built a massive house to live in. They died without any children, so the house was neglected for a while and then put up for sale and bought by Cyril Conroy, a real estate investor who moved in with his wife, Elna, and his daughter, Maeve. The VanHoebeeks had even left behind the furniture and painted portraits of themselves, which remain hanging over the fireplace in the parlor for the entirety of this book.
Danny hadn’t been born yet, so the story starts with his earliest memories in the 50s of the house, his father, Maeve, and the women working in the house.
Danny’s mother runs out on them when Danny is so young he doesn’t even remember her. Maeve is left to raise Danny, along with the two women who work in the house, Sandy and Jocelyn. Fluffy was the caretaker of the house and was also left to help raise Maeve and Danny, but she whacked Danny on the head with a spoon when he was a child and was promptly fired and sent packing.
The book starts when we meet Andrea, and the whole book is told from the perspective of an older Danny looking back on his life, so he introduces the scene as “The first time our father brought Andrea to the the Dutch House,” so we know right away she’s going to play a major role in the story.
Andrea is in her early thirties, whereas Cyril is in his late forties, but they start seeing each other, and it turns out Andrea has two children of her own from a previous marriage – Norma and Bright, who are both younger than Danny. Andrea first shows her true colors by leaving Maeve and Danny to babysit her daughters without any warning or compensation while she goes off on a date with their father. Their relations do not improve after that.
Cyril and Andrea get married and Andrea loses no time in ruining everything. Despite the fact that Sandy and Jocelyn had been managing the house just fine without her, Andrea insists on sticking her nose into everything they do and micromanaging them. If she says she doesn’t like something, they can’t ever make it again, even if it’s everyone else’s favorite.
When Maeve goes off to college, Andrea moves Norma into Maeve’s room even though Norma doesn’t want to move and Bright ends up sleeping with Norma anyway because neither one is used to having a room of their own. All of Maeve’s things get moved up to the bedroom in the attic where no one ever goes, and no one even bothers to tell Maeve this before she comes home for Thanksgiving, which turns out to be the last time she ever comes home to stay.
Fast forward a few years and Danny is in high school when his father dies very suddenly of a heart attack. He just keels over one day while at work and that’s the end of that. One of his employees calls Maeve, who goes to the school to pick up Danny, and they rush to the hospital without even thinking to call Andrea. Danny says what happened next was really their own fault for having left Andrea out of the loop on something so important, even though he points out that she was left out of the loop because she was always awful to everyone. The woman has made her own bed, she just doesn’t want to lie in it.
Andrea’s worst moment comes when she calls Maeve to tell her she has to come get Danny. She doesn’t tell Maeve why she has to come get Danny, so Maeve assumes something terrible has happened and rushes over to find Danny sitting in the kitchen eating a bowl of cereal or something. It turns out Andrea refuses to have anything to do with Danny, even though he’s only 15, but Danny and Maeve have no choice but to pack up his clothes and move him into her apartment (by this time she has graduated from college and is running the books for a local frozen vegetable company called Otterson’s).
Maeve goes to see their attorney, who is sympathetic, but assures them there’s nothing he can do. Before Cyril died, Andrea had made sure her name was on everything – the Dutch House as well as every property Cyril’s company owns. So even though Danny had been expecting to take over the family business (his father had shown him how to do everything), and Maeve could have easily run the numbers side of it, they’re shut out. The only thing to which they have access is a trust fund set up specifically for the education of Danny and Andrea’s two girls, so Maeve sets out to drain the fund as much as they can.
She sends Danny to boarding school, even though he really doesn’t want to go. And then she sends him to college and medical school, even though he has absolutely no interest in becoming a doctor. All he’s ever wanted to do was invest in real estate like his father.
He finally gets his chance when he overhears a conversation about where the college is likely to build their next addition. He promptly buys two parking lots that have been on the market for two or three years, sells them to the college, and uses that money to fund his real estate business. As soon as he finishes his residency, he quits medicine for good and builds his own real estate business.
Unfortunately, his wife, Celeste, had had her heart set on marrying a doctor and never got over the disappointment of Danny quitting that prestigious life after they got married, even though he made much more money in real estate than his former classmates every made in medicine.
Throughout their young adult years, Danny and Maeve have a habit of driving over to the Dutch House and parking on the street in front of it and watching it while they talk. They talk about Andrea and their parents and the past, but they also talk about what’s currently going on in their lives. They were all they had left, so they told each other everything, which drove Celeste nuts.
At some point, Maeve decides she’s done with the past and puts a stop to driving over the the Dutch House. Not long after that, she has a massive heart attack and ends up in the hospital and who should choose that moment to show up but their mother?
Danny doesn’t want to have anything to do with her and can’t believe she has the nerve to show up after all these years, but when Maeve recovers, she’s ecstatic to have her mother back and the two of them seem to pick up their relationship right where they left off. Danny tries to be civil to Elna for Maeve’s sake, but he doesn’t do a very good job.
At some point, Elna takes them back to the Dutch House and even rings the doorbell. Despite the fact that Andrea should only be in her 50s, maybe early 60s, but she’s already suffering from dementia to the point where she thinks Danny is Cyril and clings to him. She thinks the painting of Mrs. VanHoebeek hanging over the fireplace is a painting of her mother. I know that early-onset Alzheimer’s is a thing, but this portrayal felt way too advanced for someone so young.
Elna decides that Andrea needs her help and the thought that she can go back to the house to care for someone who disowned and kicked out Elna’s children when Elna herself couldn’t stand to stay in the house to take care of her own children is enough to make me furious.
Maeve tells her mom she can’t do that to her, and when Elna says Andrea needs her, Maeve says, “I need you.” Maeve later tells Danny it’s not good for her health and the next thing we hear about Maeve is that she’s dead, so it’s hard not to believe that Elna’s behavior contributed to her death.
Maeve had gotten very sick with diabetes right after her mother left the first time and their father had always told them that if their mother came back Maeve would die. He honestly believed that, and despite all the medical training Danny has had, he finds it hard to discredit something he was told so early and for so long.
As much as this story is about Danny and Maeve, you know it all has to come back to the house, right? Elna does, in fact, continue to care for Andrea all the way up until her death. Although Danny starts out furious at his mom, it’s hard to stay mad at your mom, especially when you have to deal with her all the time, so he more or less gets over it.
When Andrea dies, her two daughters want nothing to do with the house, Danny wants nothing to do with the house, but his daughter, May, who has just graduated from NYU, tells Norma to “wait a couple years” for her to be able to afford to buy the house from her. She keeps telling everyone she’s going to be an incredibly famous and successful actress and no one believes her, but she turns out to be right. She buys the house and hosts huge, Gatsby-scale parties there, which is perfect because Fluffy talked about how the VanHoebeeks had hosted huge parties there, so everything came full circle and I could not have been more satisfied with that ending!