On Sat, Dec. 7, the Ladies Who Brunch got together to discuss Ann Patchett’s book, The Dutch House. Rosalind Reisner, Melissa Wyse, Gloria Koster, Antoinette Carona, and Eileen Donovan attended with Jill Wisoff presiding over the meeting. The group reached a general agreement that the novel had a conversational tone and used fairy tale tropes.
The book is a story about connections and revelations following the Conroy family. Told by Danny, the son, through memories, the family’s lives are presented in a non-linear manner. The story jumps from past to present and back again.
The Characters
Danny’s and Maeve’s mother, Elna, is portrayed as a compulsive helper and caretaker. She seems to care as much for the homeless people she works with as her own children. The group indicated they would have liked to know more about her. Elna is a complex character and readers are only treated to a superficial glimpse of what motivates her.
The father, Cyril, is a strong figure. He buys the Dutch House because it is prestigious. He believes if his family lives there they will become what the house stands for. Cyril refuses to tell Danny or Maeve anything about his past because he feels ashamed by it and wants to rise above his childhood social standing. The group discussed how he tries to impose his desire for greatness on his wife as, later on, Maeve does to Danny, and Danny does to his own wife. Throughout the book, the characters fight against their true nature in hopes of becoming someone or something better.
After his divorce, a fact concealed from Maeve and Danny who believe their mother is dead, Cyril marries Andrea. A marriage that seems forced on him. But Andrea loves the house and wants her two girls to grow up with the house’s status. Over time, she assumes the role of the evil stepmother. Especially when she evicts Maeve from her large luxurious bedroom so her own two daughters can live there. Maeve is exiled to a small room in the attic. The group agreed that this was reminiscent of Cinderella, although the endings are not similar.
Danny seems to have a limited vision of what’s happening around him. Events and motives only become clear as he ages. The group commented on how his actions raised the question of whether you need to rise to what you can be, or stay where you are content. This is most evident when he encourages Maeve to leave her position with the local produce company and do something more with her life, even though she enjoys her work.
Concluding Thoughts
Other overall themes that popped up in the discussion concerned how the married couples suppress their true natures to placate their partners, and how characters deny their own weaknesses while blaming losses on the weaknesses of other characters. We saw many fairy tale tropes throughout the story including Cinderella, the mother’s death/abandonment of her young children, the evil stepmother, and the house assuming the role of a main character as it does in Hansel and Gretel. The group ended the discussion and noted that retelling or adapting fairy tales to modern day stories is becoming a popular literary device.
Next Time…
Up next, The Ladies Who Brunch will be discussing two popular Romance/Dating books on Saturday, February 1st! Join them for a conversation on Candace Bushnell’s Is There Still Sex in the City and Nancy Thayer’s Let It Snow. Register for the meeting here!
Eileen Joyce Donovanwrote her historical novel,Promises,to tell the little-known story of the “seavacuees” who were sent to Canada from England during the German blitz of WWII. After obtaining her MA in English from Northern Arizona University, she went on to teach writing in colleges in Arizona, North Carolina, and New Jersey. She currently lives in Brooklyn, New York and is working on another historical novel set in Montana in 1944.
