Ann Patchett. The Dutch House. Harper 2019.

We had read Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder years ago. It was a clever and fascinating tale. Recently, we had an opportunity to read The Dutch House, her latest novel. Very different in setting and drama from the Amazonian State of Wonder, The Dutch House has its own fascinating story, even if the setting is not so exotic.

The Dutch House itself is almost a character in the story. It comes to represent the fortunes of the Conroy family. Our narrator is Danny Conroy the son of the family who grows up in this stately near-mansion in suburban Philadelphia. The tale tells much of the life story of Danny and his sister Maeve, who is eight years older.

They are raised by their father and two loyal housekeepers. A third one Danny barely remembers as she was dismissed when he was fairly young. His mother left the family for India when Danny was about three years old. He does not remember her at all. What little he knows about her he mostly learns from his sister.

Things get complicated when Danny is a teen and his father remarries. Andrea has two younger daughters from her first marriage. After four years of marriage, Mr. Conroy dies and leaves everything except an educational trust fund to Andrea. Danny and Maeve get virtually nothing. Not only that, they are kicked out of the house. Maeve is already working and Danny is in college. At least he could continue with school on the trust fund.

Mr. Conroy had become successful in real estate. Growing up, Danny learned from him. He went with his father one Saturday a month to collect rent from tenants until he went away to boarding school. In summers, he worked for his father learning all kinds of maintenance and how to work with various contractors.

Both siblings have virtually nothing to do with Andrea or her daughters after that. Maeve has a plan, though. Danny is at Columbia. Have him take pre-med. That way the trust fund will have to pay for years of medical school. At least that will be money that Andrea can’t get her greedy hands on.

Through all this, Maeve and Danny occasionally drive back to their old neighborhood and park across the street from the Dutch House. They reminisce and otherwise catch up on news. To them it becomes a kind of symbol of their lost family life with their disappearing mother and dead father. It also reminds all of us that life is not always just.

Although Danny graduates with an M.D. and completes his residency, all while he is med school, he is buying property in New York. As an undergrad, he heard that Columbia was looking to expand. He bought two parking lots near the school and then sold them two years later at a significant profit when Columbia finally raised the money to buy the land. He was on his way in his father’s footsteps as a successful real estate entrepreneur.

He gets married, has two kids, keeps in touch with Maeve, and also keeps in touch off and on with the three women who served at the Dutch House when he was growing up. It sounds almost mundane, but Patchett tells the story in such a way that we think of other things. Always in the background is the Dutch House—so called because a family with a Dutch name built the house and lived there before the Conroys. The portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Van Hoebeek (“who bake”) continue to hang on the wall there even after Andrea moves in.

To tell more would be giving away surprises. This tale, though, reminded this reviewer of many things. Some are tales of an inheritance which I do not feel at liberty to share. Others, though, are literary. The Tin Drum is narrated by a boy who is fluent in language and remembers things from the moment of his birth. There is a pseudoscientific name for this condition. It really is impossible, but we get caught up in the story, so we make that Coleridgean willing suspension of disbelief—same here but for a different reason.

Doctor Zhivago has a curious character, the doctor’s half-brother Yevgraf. He is a relatively minor character in this Russian epic, but he shows up at surprising times. It seems more lucky than anything else, but he is a kind of deus ex machina because of his authority in the NKVD. There are some surprises like Yevgraf in this tale.

I am also reminded of Long Days’ Journey into Night. As Danny begins to piece together the story of his mother from what his sister and the three housekeepers recall, we are reminded of Mary Tyone, the mother in the O’Neill classic. Like Mary and James Tyrone, Mrs. Conroy was a novice in a nunnery when Mr. Conroy wooed her during World War II. She did not go to India like some baby boomers to find a guru (see Pirsig). She went there to help the poor like Mother Theresa.

Both Mrs. Conroys have strong but very different reactions to the Dutch House. For Mrs. Conroy #1, it is too elegant; it hardly befits someone who considered taking a vow of poverty to serve the underprivileged. For Andrea, it is what makes Mr. Conroy attractive. She will do what she can to hang onto it.

The readers? As they get caught up in the story, they, too, will also want to find out what happens in the Dutch House and its tale of not quite ordinary people.