The Dutch House

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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

Critics Review

Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature

Guardian

Her finest novel yet

Sunday Times

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

Rosamund Lupton

Bliss

Nigella Lawson

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

John Boyne

What a spectacular novel. A masterpiece, I’d say

Cathy Rentzenbrink

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

A rare book, the kind you ration, one that grabs you by the heart and brain and pulls you right in

Evening Standard

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

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

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

She rivals Tyler for emotional acuity

Metro

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

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

Renée Knight

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

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

Beautifully imagined … Patchett has excelled herself to produce one of the most moving and engaging novels this year

Daily Express

Engrossing … A captivating family saga about injustice and forgiveness

Daily Mirror

Gothic and slyly comic, it’s full of smart observations about sibling power struggles

Mail on Sunday

User Reviews

Book 5.0
Narration 5.0
5.0
5.0
Sue Steele 08/08/2024

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