Dutch House

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’ GuardianNominated for the Women’s Prize 2020A 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

Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature, Her finest novel yet, A wonderful hypnotic masterpiece of a novel. The best book I’ve read in years, Bliss, The buzz around The Dutch House is totally justified. Her best yet, which is saying something

Ann Patchett is the author of seven novels and three works of non-fiction. She has been shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction three times; with The Magician’s Assistant in 1998, winning the prize with Bel Canto in 2002, and was most recently shortlisted with State of Wonder in 2012. She is also the winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and was named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2012. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. She is the co-owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee, where she lives with her husband, Karl.