The Dutch House
- Author Ann Patchett
- Narrator Tom Hanks
- Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing
- Publish Date 24 September 2019
- Run Time 9 hours and 53 minutes
- Format Audio
- Genre Family life fiction, Modern and contemporary fiction, Narrative theme: Coming of age, Narrative theme: Love and relationships.
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What to expect
Bloomsbury presents The Dutch House by Ann Patchett, read by Tom Hanks.
Next, dive into TOM LAKE – the breath-taking newest novel from Ann Patchett
Lose yourself in the story of a lifetime – the unforgettable Sunday Times bestseller
‘Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature’ Guardian
Nominated for the Women’s Prize 2020
A STORY OF TWO SIBLINGS, THEIR CHILDHOOD HOME, AND A PAST THAT THEY CAN’T LET GO.
Like swallows, like salmon, we were the helpless captives of our migratory patterns. We pretended that what we had lost was the house, not our mother, not our father. We pretended that what we had lost had been taken from us by the person who still lived inside.
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.
‘The best book I’ve read in years’ Rosamund Lupton
‘Her finest novel yet’ Sunday Times
‘The buzz around The Dutch House is totally justified. Her best yet, which is saying something’ John Boyne
‘A masterpiece’ Cathy Rentzenbrink
‘Bliss’ Nigella Lawson
Next, dive into TOM LAKE – the breath-taking newest novel from Ann Patchett
Lose yourself in the story of a lifetime – the unforgettable Sunday Times bestseller
‘Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature’ Guardian
Nominated for the Women’s Prize 2020
A STORY OF TWO SIBLINGS, THEIR CHILDHOOD HOME, AND A PAST THAT THEY CAN’T LET GO.
Like swallows, like salmon, we were the helpless captives of our migratory patterns. We pretended that what we had lost was the house, not our mother, not our father. We pretended that what we had lost had been taken from us by the person who still lived inside.
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.
‘The best book I’ve read in years’ Rosamund Lupton
‘Her finest novel yet’ Sunday Times
‘The buzz around The Dutch House is totally justified. Her best yet, which is saying something’ John Boyne
‘A masterpiece’ Cathy Rentzenbrink
‘Bliss’ Nigella Lawson
Critics Review
Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature
Her finest novel yet
A wonderful hypnotic masterpiece of a novel. The best book I’ve read in years
Bliss
The buzz around The Dutch House is totally justified. Her best yet, which is saying something
What a spectacular novel. A masterpiece, I’d say
A gloriously immersive family saga about lost inheritance
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
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
A rare book, the kind you ration, one that grabs you by the heart and brain and pulls you right in
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
Indelibly poignant in its long unspooling perspective on family life, The Dutch House brilliantly captures how time undoes all certainties
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
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
A family story full of love and pain and insight
Impeccably fine … A thoughtful, quietly profound book
The Dutch House offers … A simultaneous awareness of human fragility and human resilience
As always, Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life, rather than literature
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
Masterly
An outstanding novel, wryly funny, heart-breakingly sad and entirely engrossing
We’re calling it now: The Dutch House will be the book of the autumn ... Her finest novel yet
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
Patchett is a master at pacing and detail … The question of what makes a home pervades this gripping book
She rivals Tyler for emotional acuity
Ann Patchett writes novels that quietly and thoroughly devastate the reader – in a good way. Her new novel is no exception
Patchett well deserves her reputation for compelling novels, and The Dutch House is her most enthralling yet
Wise and funny and unwraps the complexities of human beings with heartbreaking tenderness. I love this book
If there’s a better, more poignant or involving novel than The Dutch House published this year, I will be very, very surprised
A dark modern fairy tale, a delicately woven portrait of a family in flux
The plot is gentle but firm while Patchett’s prose dazzles with detail and nuance, spinning a story that tucks itself inside your heart
Wonderfully astute ... Patchett’s books … have a sly comic undertow
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
Beautifully imagined … Patchett has excelled herself to produce one of the most moving and engaging novels this year
Engrossing … A captivating family saga about injustice and forgiveness
Gothic and slyly comic, it’s full of smart observations about sibling power struggles
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