People seemed much more upset about it than I was. It was a funny thing to throw a book out. I knew I wanted to try writing in first person after being away from it for so many years (my first two novels are in first person), so I went into the story with that in mind. I never thought of telling the story from her point of view because I wanted to be able to see her from a distance. The whole time I was writing this book I was planning on calling it Maeve. How did you know, then, that the story needed to be told from Danny’s perspective? Did you ever consider telling it from Maeve’s point of view, or in third-person?ĪP: Maeve is so at the center of everything. MLP: Then I say unto Zadie Smith, as I have said aloud many times while reading her books: “Thank you, Zadie.” What a fantastic story prompt. The book went in many different directions after that. It’s funny to me when people say my work isn’t political because everything feels political to me these days. I wanted a book about someone who didn’t want to be rich.

The other thing was the presidential election, and what felt like a celebration of extreme wealth. (For a free preview, read the first 12 pages of the book here. In Patchett’s elegant prose, these characters come to life and The Dutch House becomes an immersive, unforgettable reading experience-a book that deserves to be savored, page by page. The next four decades reveal how Maeve and Danny are shaped by the absence of their mother and the loving presence of one another, and how each fares differently in the wake of their childhood loss. His beloved big sister was already the center of Danny’s universe, but as they enter adolescence, Maeve becomes his surrogate caretaker, too.

It’s only a few years until Cyril remarries, bringing into the family a stepmother, Andrea, who also comes with two girls of her own (and has no interest in parenting four children).

But when Danny is three and Maeve is ten, Elna leaves, abandoning her children to Cyril’s care for reasons they don’t understand. Without spoiling too many twists and turns, here’s a brief overview of who’s who:ĭanny Conroy and his sister Maeve spend their early years in a Philadelphia mansion that was a gift from their father, Cyril, to their mother, Elna.

The Dutch House, which follows one fractured family over several decades as the years pile on both joy and heartbreak, is a testament to sibling bonds as well as a meditation on familial responsibility. Here at Parnassus, booksellers have passed around an early copy of Ann Patchett’s eighth novel so many times it’s starting to fall apart, which tells you something about how excited we are to hold the real thing in our hands at last.

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