They often sit in Maeve’s car outside the Dutch house and reminisce, but as Danny notes, All these events bring Danny and Maeve closer and closer together. As Danny eschews a medical career, Maeve eschews medical treatment for diabetes. He goes away to boarding school and then to medical school but finishes up following his father’s footsteps into real estate. When Cyril dies of a heart attack, and with Maeve already at college, Andrea takes over the family’s wealth and ejects Danny from the house. She proceeds to dominate the house and Cyril, becoming the quintessential evil stepmother.
” Their father’s new partner, Andrea, sets her sights on the grandeur of the Dutch House and, once they marry, she moves in with her two young daughters. He doesn’t talk to Danny: “What I knew of my father was what I saw. Their father on the other hand is distant, really distant. The loss brings Maeve and Danny close, really close. In short, she hates it and leaves, seemingly without reason when Danny is 3 and Maeve 10. VanHoebeek, as a present for his wife, Elna.Įlna is unnerved by their new fortune and the grandeur of the house, the belongings left behind by its former owners and the tragedy surrounding them. Prior to meeting Andrea, their children’s father, Cyril, comes into a fortune from property and buys the house and all its contents, including enormous singular portraits of Mr. Everyone in Philadelphia knows of the Dutch House. It was constructed on the outskirts of Philadelphia by a team of craftsmen with pieces imported from a castle in Utrecht. The Dutch House is so named because of the family that built it, the VanHoebeeks. We first meet Maeve and Danny as children when they are introduced to Andrea, a young widow their father brings to their house, the Dutch House.
It is narrated through the eyes of an adult Danny and flips back and forward from his childhood and teenage years to the present.
The story takes place after World War II and follows the life of Danny Conroy and his older sister Maeve. The Dutch House is as a heart-wrenching novel of the close bond between a brother and sister, their childhood home, and a past that will not let them go. This is her eighth novel and the fourth one I have read (my favourite is State of Wonder).
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