Overview

Next, dive into TOM LAKE – the breath-taking newest novel from Ann Patchett Lose yourself in the story of a lifetime – the unforgettable Sunday Times bestseller ‘Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature’ Guardian Nominated for the Women’s Prize 2020 A STORY OF TWO SIBLINGS, THEIR CHILDHOOD HOME, AND A PAST THAT THEY CAN’T LET GO. Like swallows, like salmon, we were the helpless captives of our migratory patterns. We pretended that what we had lost was the house, not our mother, not our father. We pretended that what we had lost had been taken from us by the person who still lived inside. In the economic boom following the Second World War, Cyril Conroy's real estate investments take his family from poverty to enormous wealth. With it he buys the Dutch House, a lavish mansion in the Philadelphia suburbs. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves. Danny Conroy grows up in the opulence of the Dutch House. Though his father is distant and his mother is absent, Danny has his beloved sister Maeve: Maeve, with her wall of black hair, her wit, her brilliance. The siblings grow and change as life plays out under the watchful eyes of the house’s former owners, in the frames of their oil paintings. Then one day their father brings home Andrea, a new stepmother. Though they cannot know it, her arrival to the Dutch House sows the seed of the defining loss of Danny and Maeve’s lives: exiled from the house and tossed back into the poverty from which their family rose, Danny and Maeve have only each other to count on. ‘The best book I’ve read in years’ Rosamund Lupton ‘Her finest novel yet’ Sunday Times ‘The buzz around The Dutch House is totally justified. Her best yet, which is saying something’ John Boyne ‘A masterpiece’ Cathy Rentzenbrink ‘Bliss’ Nigella Lawson

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9781526614971

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Reviews

A wonderful hypnotic masterpiece of a novel. The best book I've read in years -- Rosamund Lupton Ann Patchett writes novels that quietly and thoroughly devastate the reader - in a good way. Her new novel is no exception * Red * What a spectacular novel. A masterpiece, I'd say -- Cathy Rentzenbrink Wise and funny and unwraps the complexities of human beings with heartbreaking tenderness. I love this book -- Renee Knight Bliss -- Nigella Lawson The buzz around The Dutch House is totally justified. Her best yet, which is saying something -- John Boyne If there's a better, more poignant or involving novel than The Dutch House published this year, I will be very, very surprised * Andrew Holgate * Praise for Commonwealth: 'Dazzling * Sunday Times * Patchett blends wisdom and humanity jointly with the icy forensic gaze of someone not afraid to expose the frailties of human behaviour ... Read it -- Jojo Moyes Patchett writes excellently and seemingly artlessly * Daily Mail * Stunning -- India Knight * Sunday Times * Hugely entertaining and an unsettling joy to read -- Roddy Doyle * Irish Times * An outstanding novel ... The opening is a show stopper ... Patchett is a pleasure to read: there is a no-fuss casualness to the prose that is only possible when a writer is in control of every word and she is master of her art * Observer * From the mesmerising first chapter to the final page, Ann Patchett's new novel is utterly brilliant. This domestic drama deals in loyalties, sibling rivalries, jealously and heartbreak in an effortlessly graceful style that makes for unputdownable reading * Sunday Express * The opening scene .... is a faultless set piece ... Her prose is equally powerful when she's evoking a 1970s summer in Virginia ... Patchett deftly summons up a simmering childhood anger and dangerously ricocheting energy * The Times * The book flows easily between narrators, constantly switching from past to present, and slowly revealing what happened that summer, allowing Patchett to play with memory and perspective to surprisingly moving effect ... Commonwealth is a book about relationships and the obligations they bring .. Poignant ... funny ... An engaging novel that draws you in with sharp observation, a gin-fuelled plot written in beautiful prose and convincing dialogue. You miss the characters once it's over * Evening Standard * She achieves the great novel of American domestic life with a spare hand and a demotic prose that seems to come from the mouths of her characters, even when they aren't speaking ... Her unshowy account of public and private stories addresses the great puzzle of what our lives are really made of ... This novel convinces me she's wiping the floor with her heftier competitors -- Linda Grant * Daily Telegraph * Commonwealth is full of heart, and is Patchett's most complex and emotionally suspenseful novel. She never hits a wrong note although she conjures with many deftly drawn characters. The opening chapter is one of the best party-scene seductions ever written -- Louise Erdrich She is one of those rare writers, like Anne Enright or Anne Tyler, who is able to convey poignancy and humour in the space of a single sentence -- Elizabeth Day * Irish Times * So clear and clean and at the top of her game ... It is just so masterfully done. The sweep of it and the subtlety of the ideas -- Esther Freud Beautiful -- Katie Roiphe * Observer * Gorgeously evocative writing and complex characters ... Patchett is a writer of exceptional talent, and this is one of her best yet * Good Housekeeping * A deft craftsman ... Patchett ultimately wins the reader over with her perceptive qualities, alluring characters and undertone of humour ... In Commonwealth, Patchett's nimble storytelling floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee * Literary Review * This delicate exploration of the ties that bind us never seems to lose focus * Stylist * An absorbing, brilliantly observed novel * Woman & Home * Rich and engrossing ... her observations about people and life are insightful; and her underlying tone is one of compassion and amusement ... Patchett also skilfully illustrates the way that seemingly minor, even arbitrary decisions can have long-lasting consequences and the way that we often fear the wrong things -- Curtis Sittenfeld * New York Times * Delicious. From the moment a kiss at a christening ends up sparking the divide and re-merging of two families, I was drawn into the minutiae of the drama ... Patchett makes you feel like you've lived among it and have been subsumed into the newly drawn clan * Grazia *

Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature * Guardian * Her finest novel yet * Sunday Times * A wonderful hypnotic masterpiece of a novel. The best book I've read in years -- Rosamund Lupton Bliss -- Nigella Lawson The buzz around The Dutch House is totally justified. Her best yet, which is saying something -- John Boyne What a spectacular novel. A masterpiece, I'd say -- Cathy Rentzenbrink A gloriously immersive family saga about lost inheritance * Guardian, Books of the Year * One of my top favourite contemporary writers. I don't think that there's a book of hers that I haven't put down at the end and been haunted by for weeks after * Gillian Anderson * The vicissitudes of life in a step-family unfold over five decades ... A moving portrait of an unusual house and the unhappy family living in it * The Times, Book of the Year * The Dutch House is a novel that assures Patchett, alongside John Irving and Anne Tyler, a place as one of the foremost chroniclers of the burdens of emotional inventory and its central place in American lives -- Catherine Taylor * Financial Times * Indelibly poignant in its long unspooling perspective on family life, The Dutch House brilliantly captures how time undoes all certainties * Observer * An intimate and transporting novel ... The Dutch House is a novel brimming with pain and tenderness in which Patchett's gifts as a storyteller are on full display ... A searching, exquisitely wrenching novel about family, sacrifice and obsession * Sunday Times * One of the most celebrated novelists of our times ... But it is her new book, widely billed a one of this autumn's best new reads, where she truly comes into her own * Sunday Times Magazine * A family story full of love and pain and insight * Herald, Books of the Year * Impeccably fine ... A thoughtful, quietly profound book * i paper * The Dutch House offers ... A simultaneous awareness of human fragility and human resilience * Daily Telegraph * As always, Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life, rather than literature * Times Literary Supplement, Books of the Year * She uses her signature blend of wry humour, rage and regret in a tale of siblings who cannot escape the shadow of their childhood home * i * Masterly * The Times * An outstanding novel, wryly funny, heart-breakingly sad and entirely engrossing -- Eithne Farry * S Magazine * We're calling it now: The Dutch House will be the book of the autumn ... Her finest novel yet * Sunday Times * Few novelists today combine such a forensic eye with an acute and humane understanding of human nature. I would read Ann Patchett's shopping list -- Jojo Moyes Patchett is a master at pacing and detail ... The question of what makes a home pervades this gripping book -- Erica Wagner * New Statesman * She rivals Tyler for emotional acuity -- Anthony Cummins * Metro * Ann Patchett writes novels that quietly and thoroughly devastate the reader - in a good way. Her new novel is no exception * Red * Patchett well deserves her reputation for compelling novels, and The Dutch House is her most enthralling yet * Vogue * Wise and funny and unwraps the complexities of human beings with heartbreaking tenderness. I love this book -- Renee Knight If there's a better, more poignant or involving novel than The Dutch House published this year, I will be very, very surprised * Andrew Holgate * A dark modern fairy tale, a delicately woven portrait of a family in flux * Evening Standard * The plot is gentle but firm while Patchett's prose dazzles with detail and nuance, spinning a story that tucks itself inside your heart * i paper * Wonderfully astute ... Patchett's books ... have a sly comic undertow -- Craig Brown * Mail on Sunday * A marvellously romantic and evocative novel about the nostalgic pull of a lost home ... Beautifully written and often tender ... That rare thing: a novel which reveals greater riches on a second reading -- Cressida Connolly * Spectator * Beautifully imagined ... Patchett has excelled herself to produce one of the most moving and engaging novels this year * Daily Express * Engrossing ... A captivating family saga about injustice and forgiveness * Daily Mirror * Gothic and slyly comic, it's full of smart observations about sibling power struggles * Mail on Sunday *

Author Information

Ann Patchett is the author of seven novels and three works of non-fiction. She has been shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction three times; with The Magician’s Assistant in 1998, winning the prize with Bel Canto in 2002, and was most recently shortlisted with State of Wonder in 2012. She is also the winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and was named one of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2012. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. She is the co-owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee, where she lives with her husband, Karl.

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