First book for 2026: The Dutch House
This is, in effect, a masterclass in the true potential of a generational soap opera when written by an outstanding writer. For me, it was made even better by being narrated by an outstanding actor (Tom Hanks), who was the perfect voice for this story.
It is the story of Danny (the narrator) and his sister Maeve, whose mother abandons them when Maeve is 11 and Danny 4. It is the story of their distant father, real estate developer Cyril, and his premature death; their scheming evil stepmother, Andrea, and her great crime against them; their stepsisters, Norma and Bright; their household staff and lifelong devoted friends, Jocelyn, Sandy and Fluffy (Fiona). It is the story of Danny's wife, Celeste, and his children, May and Kevin.
Above all, though, it is the story of the Dutch House - the strange, luxurious and exceedingly odd Philadelphia glass mansion that Danny's father buys for the family in the 1950s when Maeve is small (before Danny's birth). The Dutch House is a character, and indeed a dominant one, in the story and in the lives of everyone who lives in it or interacts with it. The sense of place is so potent that I feel like I can see the house in my mind, all its windows and ceilings, its Delft architecture, its portraits of the Dutch family who built it, its angles and curves, the swimming pool and the lawns, the views.
The primary relationship in the book (and in Danny's life) is that between the siblings. Maeve becomes all things to Danny - a pseudo parent, a friend, a confidante, closer than his own wife to his heart. Patchett delicately unspools the ways in which the triple traumas of their early lives (their mother's abandonment, their father's death, and Andrea's robbing them of their inheritance) impact and warp both of them, and force them into a bonded teaming that cannot be disrupted by later events or relationships.
Both Danny and Maeve are mostly likeable but deeply damaged (Danny's inability to form healthy attachments to anyone but his sister is glaringly obviously a result of his childhood, for instance). The complexity of the other characters around them is an intriguing grace note in building a compelling saga - Jocelyn, Sandy, Fluffy, Celeste, Elva (Danny and Maeve's mother), Norma, and even May and Kevin are all complicated people, showing both good and bad characteristics and behaviours. The only frank villain in the story is Andrea, while the only frank angel is Maeve's boss (just a straightforwardly exceedingly decent man). The fact that everyone else is given their full humanity is part of what elevated the story for me.
I was challenged by the plotline involving Danny and Maeve's mother, Elva, and her rationale for abandoning her family (and her later actions upon her return). Seeing so viscerally the wounds that both Danny and Maeve carried, it was very hard for me, as a reader and a mother, to see Elva as redeemable in any way, but Patchett constantly challenges and interrogates that instinctive response.
I think I had a semi-catharsis in reading Elva, once I came to the realisation that she epitomises the kind of "selfish altruist" which my own family of origin is not unfamiliar with - a person whose desire to do good in the abstract / at large leads them to neglect or completely resile from their responsibilities to their own kin. It was not comfortable, but it was instructive, to go on Danny's internal journey with him of struggling to understand and come to some peace with Elva. Forgiveness, at the end, wasn't the requirement or even the goal - Danny's need for resolution and release was the point, and Patchett outlines what that looks like in searing detail.
I found the ending of the book really moving (tears were shed). I won't say much more about it, to avoid spoiling, except to say that the ending really does land, and reinforces why The Dutch House is the right, indeed only possible, title for this wonderful novel. 9/10 for me.
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