"The Dutch House" by Ann Patchett

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
Call Number: FICTION Patchett
At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves. Cyril's son Danny and his older sister Maeve are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another.

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The Symbolism of the Dutch House: What does the Dutch House symbolize throughout the novel? How does its physical presence and history shape the characters and their relationships?
Sibling Dynamics: Discuss the relationship between Maeve and Danny. How does their dynamic evolve over time? How do their roles within the family change as they grow older?
Father Figures: Analyze the impact of Cyril Conroy, both as a father and as a character, on the lives of Maeve and Danny. How does his absence or presence shape their identities and choices?
Memory and Nostalgia: The novel is heavily influenced by memory and nostalgia. How do the characters grapple with their memories of the past, and how do these memories shape their present lives?
Redemption and Forgiveness: Explore the theme of redemption and forgiveness in the novel. Are any characters able to find redemption for their past actions? How do forgiveness and reconciliation play a role in their journeys?
The Influence of Wealth: Discuss the role of wealth and privilege in the lives of the characters, particularly the Conroy family. How does their socio-economic status affect their relationships and opportunities?
Gender Roles and Expectations: Consider the portrayal of gender roles and expectations in the novel, particularly through the characters of Maeve and Danny. How do societal expectations influence their choices and identities?
The Power of Place: How does the setting of the Dutch House impact the characters and the unfolding of the story? What significance does the house hold for the Conroy family, and how does it reflect their internal struggles?
Loss and Grief: Discuss the theme of loss and grief in the novel, particularly in relation to the characters' experiences with abandonment, death, and estrangement. How do they cope with these losses, and what do they learn from them?
The Unreliable Narrator: Danny serves as the narrator of the story. How does his perspective shape the reader's understanding of the events and characters? How reliable do you find him as a narrator, and why?
Social Class and Identity: Explore the theme of social class and its impact on identity formation in the novel. How do characters navigate their social standing, and what does it reveal about their values and aspirations?
The Cycle of Dysfunction: Consider the recurring patterns of dysfunction within the Conroy family. How do past traumas and unresolved issues contribute to the perpetuation of these patterns across generations?

Early Life and Education: Ann Patchett was born on December 2, 1963, in Los Angeles, California, but spent most of her childhood in Nashville, Tennessee. Her mother, Jeanne Ray, was a nurse, and her father, Frank Patchett, was a Los Angeles police officer. Patchett credits her mother with fostering her love for literature by reading to her frequently during her childhood.

Patchett attended St. Bernard Academy, a Catholic girls' school in Nashville, where she developed an interest in writing. She later attended Sarah Lawrence College in New York, where she studied creative writing and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1985.

Literary Career: After graduating from college, Patchett worked as a waitress, freelance writer, and magazine editor before focusing on her writing full-time. She published her first novel, "The Patron Saint of Liars," in 1992, which received critical acclaim and established her as a promising new voice in American literature.

Patchett gained widespread recognition with her fourth novel, "Bel Canto" (2001), which won the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction, among other honors. The novel tells the story of a group of hostages held captive in a South American country and explores themes of love, art, and human connection.

She continued to publish novels that received both critical and commercial success, including "State of Wonder" (2011) and "Commonwealth" (2016). "Commonwealth" was a finalist for the 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and became a New York Times bestseller.

In addition to her novels, Patchett has written essays and non-fiction pieces for publications such as The New York Times Magazine, Harper's Magazine, and The Atlantic. She is also the co-owner of Parnassus Books, an independent bookstore in Nashville.

Personal Life: Patchett married Karl VanDevender, a Nashville physician, in 2007. She is known for her philanthropic efforts, including her support for literacy programs and her advocacy for independent bookstores. Patchett divides her time between Nashville and New York City.

Ann Patchett's work is characterized by its vivid storytelling, rich character development, and exploration of themes such as family, love, and the human condition. She is regarded as one of the most talented and influential contemporary American writers.

The Butterfly Lampshade by Aimee Bender
Call Number: FICTION Bender
On the night her single mother is taken to a mental hospital after a psychotic episode, eight year-old Francie is staying with her babysitter, waiting to take the train to Los Angeles to go live with her aunt and uncle. There is a lovely lamp next to the couch on which she's sleeping, the shade adorned with butterflies. When she wakes, Francie spies a dead butterfly, exactly matching the ones on the lamp, floating in a glass of water. She drinks it before the babysitter can see. Twenty years later, Francie is compelled to make sense of that moment, and two other incidents -- her discovery of a desiccated beetle from a school paper, and a bouquet of dried roses from some curtains. Her recall is exact -- she is sure these things happened. But despite her certainty, she wrestles with the hold these memories maintain over her, and what they say about her own place in the world. As Francie conjures her past and reduces her engagement with the world to a bare minimum, she begins to question her relationship to reality. The scenes set in Francie's past glow with the intensity of childhood perception, how physical objects can take on an otherworldly power. The question for Francie is, What do these events signify? And does this power survive childhood?
The Turner House by Angela Flournoy
Call Number: FICTION Flournoy
"A powerful, timely debut, The Turner House marks a major new contribution to the story of the American family. The Turners have lived on Yarrow Street for over fifty years. Their house has seen thirteen children grown and gone--and some returned; it has seen the arrival of grandchildren, the fall of Detroit's East Side, and the loss of a father. The house still stands despite abandoned lots, an embattled city, and the inevitable shift outward to the suburbs. But now, as ailing matriarch Viola finds herself forced to leave her home and move in with her eldest son, the family discovers that the house is worth just a tenth of its mortgage. The Turner children are called home to decide its fate and to reckon with how each of their pasts haunts--and shapes--their family's future. Already praised by Ayana Mathis as "utterly moving" and "un-putdownable," The Turner House brings us a colorful, complicated brood full of love and pride, sacrifice and unlikely inheritances. It's a striking examination of the price we pay for our dreams and futures, and the ways in which our families bring us home."

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Family of Origin by C. J. Hauser
Call Number: FICTION Hauser
When Nolan Grey receives news that his father, a once-prominent biologist, has drowned off Leap's Island, he calls on Elsa, his estranged, older half-sister, to help pick up the pieces. This, despite the fact that it was he and Elsa who broke the family in the first place. The Greys have been avoiding each other for a dozen years. Elsa and Nolan travel to their father's field station, a wild and isolated spot off the Gulf Coast. Here, their father's fatalistic colleagues, the Reversalists, obsessively study the undowny bufflehead, a rare sea duck whose loss of waterproof feathers proves, they say, that evolution is running in reverse and humanity's best days are behind us. On an island that is always looking backward, it's impossible for the siblings to ignore their past. Stuck together in the close quarters of their island stilt-house, and provoked by the absurd antics of the remaining Reversalists, years of family secrecy and blame between Elsa and Nolan threaten to ruin them all over again. As the Greys urgently trek the island to find the so-called Paradise Duck, their father's final obsession, they begin to fear that they were their father's first evidence that the future held no hope.
The Children's Crusade by Ann Packer
Call Number: FICTION Packer
Bill Blair finds the land by accident, three wooded acres in a rustic community south of San Francisco. The year is 1954, long before anyone will call this area Silicon Valley. Struck by a vision of the family he has yet to create, Bill buys the property on a whim. In Penny Greenway he finds a suitable wife, a woman whose yearning attitude toward life seems compelling and answerable, and they marry and have four children. Yet Penny is a mercurial housewife, at a time when women chafed at the conventions imposed on them. She finds salvation in art, but the cost is high. Thirty years later, the three oldest Blair children, adults now and still living near the family home, are disrupted by the return of the youngest, whose sudden presence and all-too-familiar troubles force a reckoning with who they are, separately and together, and set off a struggle over the family's future. One by one, the siblings take turns telling the story--Robert, a doctor like their father; Rebecca, a psychiatrist; Ryan, a schoolteacher; and James, the malcontent, the problem child, the only one who hasn't settled down--their narratives interwoven with portraits of the family at crucial points in their history.
My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout
Call Number: FICTION Strout
Lucy Barton is recovering slowly from what should have been a simple operation. Her mother, to whom she hasn't spoken for many years, comes to see her. Gentle gossip about people from Lucy's childhood in Amgash, Illinois, seems to reconnect them, but just below the surface lie the tension and longing that have informed every aspect of Lucy's life: her escape from her troubled family, her desire to become a writer, her marriage, her love for her two daughters. Knitting this powerful narrative together is the brilliant storytelling voice of Lucy herself: keenly observant, deeply human, and truly unforgettable.
French Braid by Anne Tyler
Call Number: FICTION Tyler
A major new novel from the beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning author—a freshly observed, funny, joyful, brilliantly perceptive journey deep into one family's foibles, from the 1950s up to our pandemic present. The Garretts take their first and last family vacation in the summer of 1959. They hardly ever venture beyond Baltimore, but in some ways they have never been farther apart. Mercy has trouble resisting the siren call of her aspirations to be a painter, which means less time keeping house for her husband, Robin. Their teenage daughters, steady Alice and boy-crazy Lily, could not have less in common. Their youngest, David, is already intent on escaping his family's orbit, for reasons none of them understands. Yet, as these lives advance across decades, the Garretts' influences on one another ripple ineffably but unmistakably through each generation. Full of heartbreak and hilarity, French Braid is classic Anne Tyler: a stirring, uncannily insightful novel of tremendous warmth and humour that illuminates the kindnesses and cruelties of our daily lives, the impossibility of breaking free from those who love us, and how close—yet how unknowable—every family is to itself.

*ebook & audiobook on Libby

Islington Branch Book Club - Past Titles: "The Dutch House" by Ann Patchett

"The Dutch House" by Ann Patchett

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