excellent novel

Both mythic and naturalistic, Patchett’s story of children expelled from the mansion of their childhood by an evil stepmother showcases her great skill in the world of The Dutch House, it almost is. It’s a rare Patchett novel that ends without the slightest glimmer of redemption, and here the major players virtually all – as in a story by James – arrive at final positions that involve an ironic inversion of where they started. Danny’s eventual accommodation of the past, and of his family’s choices, seems both inevitable and earned. “The point wasn’t whether or not I liked it,” he admits. “The point was it had to be done.” And besides, by middle age he “had the idea that all of the hard things had already happened”: as always, Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature. The Dutch House” is the story of a “modern family”, as this was the era when families started to become fractured and step-parents and step-siblings became more prevalent. Some of these themes Patchett explored beautifully in “Commonwealth”, and she knows whereof she speaks because she’s written essays about her own large, extended, loosely-related-by-a-string, family. I was absorbed from page one, and I hated to turn the last page. What makes Patchett so accessible and relevant is her beautiful writing, her wit, and the fascinating stories she spins out of every-day life. At the most surprising, dramatic, and climactic scene in the novel Danny narrates: “I had not been born with an imagination large enough to encompass this moment.” Well, Ann Patchett was born with an imagination large enough – thank heavens! What a magnificent story!