The Dutch House
Reviews
I feel woozy
The Dutch House is an enthralling, fairytale-esque exploration of siblinghood and grief. Patchett combines masterful writing with a rare capture of the human condition, creating a classic that is hypnotic and intimately truthful.
Not sure how to rate this because it was good, it was just not the kind of book I would enjoy and it sort of bored me.
** spoiler alert ** Even though it's weird that Danny does everything Maeve asks of him, I understand. She is the only person he has. I liked the way this book ultimately shows us that you don't have to forgive to accept. Danny ended up having a relationship with his mother. He ended up being able to be with Andrea again. It cost me when Maeve died. Like Andy, I thought it was unfair, but Sandy was right in what she said. I loved that May bought the house, took the portrait back and brought the house back to life.
2.5 ✨ Tom Hanks’ performance was delightful but the story itself wasn’t for me. I didn’t connect with any of the characters, so following their lives felt a bit mundane, if I’m being honest. I don’t think I would have finished if I wasn’t listening on audible. Objectively, this novel is well done and beautifully written, but not for me.
started out interesting but once their father died, the trajectory of the plot was completely lost and two main characters who are paper-thin cannot hold the story for me for another couple hundred pages no matter how hard i try (167/337)
3.5, and a bit.
I am very stingy with my 5 star reviews and this book deserved each and every one of them! Well written and well narrated. An obscenely extravagant, historic house, which one sat on large acreage, has been bought by a young family. This story is a coming of age story of the family who now lives in the Dutch House. The family endures loss, trials, hardships, separation and finally forgiveness and a sense of coming home. Three generations experience The Dutch House with different emotions and memories. It is captivating and Tom Hanks brings it home as narrator.
This novel has a very strong sense of place which I enjoyed. The house in this book is a character within itself. However I struggle with the unlikable nature of the narrator. The book left me wanting more.
3.5/5
3.5
If you’re in a period full of chaos and you feel so tired and need a cozy story this is your book. Maeve and Danny are the two children in an old mansion that called as The Dutch House. Everything is disturbingly perfect in this house which It can’t be forever. This is both their story and the house as well. I hooked in a minute I started to read the book. I don’t know if it’s the story or Tom Hanks that I also listened while I was reading. Beside all I found many similarities between the siblings and the life of me and my brother. I don’t know whether this or that, I loved the book.
I am very stingy with my 5 star reviews and this book deserved each and every one of them! Well written and well narrated.
An obscenely extravagant, historic house, which one sat on large acreage, has been bought by a young family. This story is a coming of age story of the family who now lives in the Dutch House. The family endures loss, trials, hardships, separation and finally forgiveness and a sense of coming home. Three generations experience The Dutch House with different emotions and memories. It is captivating and Tom Hanks brings it home as narrator.
3.75
Thanks Emma ;))
Addictive, poignant and memorable. A family saga spanning decades that gave me one of the best sibling stories I have ever read.
Definitely a fascinating read. I usually don’t like books that span whole lifetimes, but this felt pretty seamless.
This was a somewhat simple family drama and I actually appreciated there not being so much crammed into the story. It was such a fluid story in that the transitions from present to past were seamless. The writing was also very good. I should mention here that I listened to the audiobook and I think that drastically altered my experience for the better. Tom Hanks was amazing!! However, there were countless times that I felt like if I were reading this book for myself, I would have DNF-ed. The simplicity of the story mixed with the immaturity of Danny, our narrator, was unpleasant at times. He was very narrow minded and a bit arrogant. (view spoiler)[ Was it just me or was anyone else side-eyeing him for his causal gentrification of Brooklyn? (hide spoiler)] I think I would have loved this story if Maeve had been the narrator. But it makes sense once we realize that (view spoiler)[ Danny was ultimately telling the story of his sister after she passed. (hide spoiler)] I didn't really like the way the story dealt with the topic of pain and forgiveness.(view spoiler)[Readers/listeners did not get to experience the stages of forgiveness that would help us understand why Danny or Maeve forgave their mother. The explanation from Maeve was always "she had to help people so that's why she left the family." But when their mother comes back into their life, she never has to justify her actions. She doesn't even ask for forgiveness. And after Maeve's death, Danny just comes to terms with everything and decides to let go of his anger. It just wasn't satisfying for me. (hide spoiler)] There's just something in me that wanted more. Overall, I give the story itself 3 stars and the entire audiobook experience with Tom Hanks 4 stars.
This story will haunt me. It’s about selfishness disguised as generosity and unforgiveness brought on my loss and brokenness and the desire for revenge. It’s about people who are imperfect and often unkind but don’t see that plank in their eye because they’re busy looking at the speck in another’s. It’s about complicated family relationships, and is thus totally relatable. It reminds me to let things go before it’s too late.
Wat kan Tom Hanks heerlijk voorlezen.
I think if I had read this in a different mood I would have given it 5 stars. As it was I worked my was through it in spurts, though I did enjoy it a lot.
This is a story about nostalgia, about recovering what is lost, and about how we often need to mythologise the past to make sense of ourselves. Great read.
Rezension folgt
Highlights
His grief was a river as deep and as wide as my own.
We stood there in the grass, watching the young people fluttering in and out of the windows - moths to the light.
as if the pull to the past was an inherited condition.
There are a few times in life when you leap up and the past that you'd been standing on falls away behind you, and the future you mean to land on is not yet in place, and for a moment you're suspended, knowing nothing and no one, not even yourself. It was an almost unbearably vivid present I found myself in
"Do you think it's possible to ever see the past as it actually was?"
(…) "I see the past as it actually was," Maeve said. She was looking at the trees.
"But we overlay the present onto the past. We look back through the lens of what we know now, so we're not seeing it as the people we were, we're seeing it as the people we are, and that means the past has been radically altered."
There are a few times in life when you leap up and the past that you'd been standing on falls away behind you, and the future you mean to land on is not yet in place, and for a moment you're suspended, knowing nothing and no one, not even yourself.
“I always imagined the house would die without us. I don't know, I thought it would crumple up. Do houses ever die of grief?"
“Do you think it's possible to ever see the past as it actually was?”
“I see the past as it actually was,” Maeve said. She was looking at the trees.
“But we overlay the present onto the past. We look back through the lens of what we know now, so we're not seeing it as the people we were, we're seeing it as the people we are, and that means the past has been radically altered.”
* THERE ARE A few times in life when you leap up and the past that you'd been standing on falls away behind you, and the future you mean to land on is not yet in place, and for a moment you're suspended, knowing nothing and no one, not even yourself. It was an almost unbearably vivid present I found myself in that winter when Maeve drove me to Connecticut in the Oldsmobile. She kept meaning to get rid of it but we had so little from the past. The sky was a piercing blue and the sun doubled back on the snow and all but blinded us. In spite of everything we'd lost, we'd been happy together that fall we spent in her little apartment.