Patchett, Ann "The Dutch House"

Patchett, Ann "The Dutch House" - 2019

This book looked quite promising. It has all the ingredients of a best-seller. And a best-seller it is. I often try to stay away from books that create such a huge hype but I live in Germany and our small bookshops don't carry many English books, so they tend to have them available and I tend to buy them. LOL

The Guardian wrote in their review: "Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature." Very true. However, that might be the reason why I couldn't warm to the book. I just did not like the stepmother. We were meant not to like her, I am sure. But - oh - the amount of times I could have kicked her. At least we learn how much influence an adult has on the life of a child and that this influence lasts for the rest of their lives.

No, I didn't really enjoy this book much but I can see why it gets so much attention. It's not badly written or anything like that but - not for me.

Quote:

"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 has been taken from us by the person who still lived inside…"

From the back cover:

"At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves.

The story is told by Cyril’s son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another. It is this unshakable bond between them that both saves their lives and thwarts their futures.

Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House is a dark fairy tale about two smart people who cannot overcome their past. Despite every outward sign of success, Danny and Maeve are only truly comfortable when they’re together. Throughout their lives, they return to the well-worn story of what they’ve lost with humor and rage. But when at last they’re forced to confront the people who left them behind, the relationship between an indulged brother and his ever-protective sister is finally tested."

Ann Patchett was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for "The Dutch House" in 2019.

Patchett, Ann "The Patron Saint of Liars"

Patchett, Ann "The Patron Saint of Liars" - 1992

With my former book club, I read "The Magician's Assistant". But that was years ago and I didn't really like it very much.

So, when this book was suggested to my present book club, I was a little careful, to say the least. I was certainly not prepared to pay 30 Euros for it. But, luckily, I found an arrangement with one of the other members and therefore didn't have to buy it and could indeed read it.

I was glad I did. The story is interesting, the writing captivating, the characters are somehow mysterious but also loveable. The heroine's life is full of secrets, there are so many lies and everyone seems to know there must be lies but can live with it. An interesting life, both for the mother as well as the daughter.

There is not a lot I can see about the novel itself without revealing everything but that the family lives near a home for unmarried mothers, the daughter grows up in this environment. Having grown up in a Catholic village myself, I could relate to a lot of the problems the people in the novel had.

A good read. Looking forward to more Ann Patchett novels.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2025.

From the back cover:

"'I was somewhere outside of Ludlow, California, heading due east toward Kentucky, when I realized that I would be a liar for the rest of my life.'

With these words we meet Rose Clinton, a woman in flight from her marriage and her past in flight from everything, it turns out, except the child in her womb, the girl we will know as Cecilia. Rose will ever be an alluring and mysterious woman; it is Cecilia, though, who becomes the ultimate heroine of this novel, and we watch her life with mounting wonder and apprehension.

With The Patron Saint of Liars, Ann Patchett has given us an utterly fresh novel, enchanted and enchanting. Much of its action takes place in the unlikely location of St. Elizabeth's, a home for unwed mothers, in Habit, Kentucky. St. Elizabeth's is a place of indigenous sorrow but surprising humor, a place of love and lies. It is here that Rose finds refuge and decides to keep her baby girl. Here she takes a job as a cook and makes a marriage to the stolid, generous, and infinitely melancholy groundskeeper, names Son. Thus Cecilia grows up - thinking her life, as children will, 'normal' - finding nothing strange about a mother without a history and an extended family consisting of nuns and an ever-changing collection of pregnant teenage girls.

In the end, Rose's past must be reborn. We know this, and yet we resist knowing it, fearing for its effect on Cecilia. This remarkable novel, which begins by beguiling and entertaining us, gathers deepening folds of emotion until it becomes a story about nothing less than the war in our hearts between knowledge and faith. The Patron Saint of Liars introduces a young writer of extraordinary accomplishment and wisdom."

The funny thing, the person who suggested the book to be discussed in May 2015, never returned to the book club and then there were the holidays, so we never actually discussed it.

Patchett, Ann "The Magician’s Assistant"

Patchett, Ann "The Magician’s Assistant" - 1997

I read this book years ago with my book club in England (so at least 15 years ago) and I don't remember much about it. Only that it didn't invite me to read more books by this author. Maybe it was too "fantastic" for me. I have read "The Patron Saint of Liars"  in the meantime and maybe I should go back to this book or at least read more novels by this author because I really liked the other one.

From the back cover: 

 

"Sabine - twenty years a magician’s assistant to her handsome, charming husband - is suddenly a widow. In the wake of his death, she finds he has left a final trick; a false identity and a family allegedly lost in a tragic accident but now revealed as very much alive and well. Named as heirs in his will, they enter Sabine’s life and set her on an adventure of unraveling his secrets, from sunny Los Angeles to the windswept plains of Nebraska, that will work its own sort of magic on her."

We discussed this in our British Book Club in January 2000.

I did read "The Patron Saint of Liars" by Ann Patchett in the meantime and I liked it a lot better.