The Dutch House

 

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A second reading because: Patchett. This time around focused on how Patchett tells the story by others telling stories, how she used the idea of choice--can you just decide to not feel things? can you decide to feel things?, and the how places (not just the Dutch House) were used as conduits of emotion and reflective of a person's values and ideals (oddly, I realized cars figured predominately as a universally loved and cherished place). Once again, I was struck by Patchett's ability to create full characters (mostly--I have a feeling the stepmom Andrea would like her day in court) and bring a sense of parallelism so that despite the growth and change, there is a sense of closure and justice.

First reading: Ann Patchett can do very little wrong in my book. I liked it even better after book club discussion. It raises a lot of questions, without giving a lot of answers. Themes of class, priorities, judgement, forgiveness, and parenting. And of course, brilliantly written.

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what I felt in those blinded days just after my father's death was not the grief for who I had lot but the shame over what I had done.

That loss was too private, shameful in a way I couldn't understand.

exhausted by the burden of so many petals.

Well, your mother hated it and Andrea loved it.  He thought he'd solved the problem.

New York represented her shame about things that were in no way her fault.

"Home is so sad," Maeve said.  "It stays as it was left, shaped to the comfort of the last to go as if to win them back.  Instead, bereft of anyone to please, it withers so, having no heart to put aside the theft."  Once she was certain Maeve had stopped, Celeste picked up the line in a softer voice.  "And turn again to what it started as, a joyous shot at how things ought to be, long fallen wide.  You can see how it was: look athe pictures and the cutlery.  The music in the piano stool.  That vase."

I'd never been in the position of getting my head around what I'd been given.  I only understood what I'd lost.

Fluffy's stories had stayed fresh because she had kept them to herself. Fluffy still knew what she knew.

Any configuration of luxury seen from a distance felt like a window on my youth.

We had made a fetish out of our misfortune, fallen in love with it.

laying the tremendous burden of her grief and shame directly on my sister's heart.

 

her voice as quiet as a page turned.

They were living together in their own paradise of memory.  

I can use the time I've got to be furious, or I can feel like the luckiest person in the world.

Thinking about the past impeded my efforts to be decent in the present.

Look at the three of us, undone by a house.