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frasersimons 's review for:
The Dutch House
by Ann Patchett
https://medium.com/springboard-thought/the-dutch-house-the-stories-we-tell-ourselves-called-memories-ff8fb98780f9
“Do you think it’s possible to ever see the past as it actually was?”
Son of Cyril Conroy, Danny is an unusual narrator. He recounts five decades of his life — chronicling the family affairs from when Cyril, by a stroke of luck, becomes wealthy after the second World War and purchases the titular Dutch House, to Danny’s present-day old age.
“Disappointment comes from expectation”
While more-or-less masquerading as narrative nonfiction in structure (while actually being historical fiction), The Dutch House is interestingly not very concerned with rooting the narrative in an overarching plotline. Like Danny’s memory, the narrative meanders and spends time in ostensibly unimportant granular details of his life. Moments that center either himself or his sister, Maeve. When it returns from these daydream-like moments, it is always to the chronological point established, though it gestures at Danny remembering his life from a later age.
Later, it becomes clear that Danny’s narration is as much for himself as for the reader.
It feels like he needs to make sense of his life any way he can. Perhaps that’s why it’s structured the way it is? Somewhat aimless but still captivating. This framing has Danny revealing details in a matter-of-fact manner. He does not drive to the points in his life where he is clearly a poor character with trepidation or obfuscation. He just remembers what happened. He did those things.
And that’s that.
Though this recount is undoubtedly unreliable due to, if nothing else, the fact that it is his own recollection of personal history, something which is interrogated when he and Maeve describe events shared by them differently quite often.
“I see the past as it actually was…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.”
This frame — if you’ll indulge an on-the-nose metaphor—essentially paints Danny and then hangs him there bare to be viewed and interpreted by the reader as they like. This humanizes and dehumanizes him. Sometimes he treats others detestably and illustrates no introspection whatsoever afterward. These moments are rare. But I expected to dislike him more.
Those moments when Danny dwells in his past, which he habitually never fails to do, undoubtedly condemn him and telegraph his future actions to the reader. A byproduct of this is that it also builds empathy in the reader for Danny; enabling them to, possibly, forgive his actions. Because to some degree, he and Maeve are both slaves to their desires and this inability to move on.
“I only understood what I’d lost.”
Even when they do move on and are doing well, they are continually pulled on a string by the allure of their former home, the Dutch House. They imagine the life they might have had as they repeatedly physically root each other in this impossible future and mostly terrible past.
This all creates a sense of inevitably as Danny’s story marches forward.
In the end, The Dutch House makes a mockery of the harbored emotions the siblings steep themselves in. The narrative gestures at restorative justice, but it does so by showing what toxic emotions, held onto for so long, may lead to. Even as it shows that life — and time — have no regard for notions like justice or morality or “fairness”.
“We had made a fetish out of our misfortune, fallen in love with it. I was sickened to realize we’d kept it going for so long, not that we had decided to stop.”
Things continue regardless. And they always will.
Growing old is a process of annihilating your previous self. Sometimes messily, sometimes with grace. Sometimes without wherewithal.
Things that were thought to be interminable and resolute prove to be different from a new perspective.
The reasons you had to hate people never existed or have long since gone.
Who you thought you were has been replaced with who you are now.
Just like the painting of Maeve hanging in the Dutch House for decades, you can stare at it and know what it means to you — but when you are given more context it becomes something entirely different.
“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.”
“Do you think it’s possible to ever see the past as it actually was?”
Son of Cyril Conroy, Danny is an unusual narrator. He recounts five decades of his life — chronicling the family affairs from when Cyril, by a stroke of luck, becomes wealthy after the second World War and purchases the titular Dutch House, to Danny’s present-day old age.
“Disappointment comes from expectation”
While more-or-less masquerading as narrative nonfiction in structure (while actually being historical fiction), The Dutch House is interestingly not very concerned with rooting the narrative in an overarching plotline. Like Danny’s memory, the narrative meanders and spends time in ostensibly unimportant granular details of his life. Moments that center either himself or his sister, Maeve. When it returns from these daydream-like moments, it is always to the chronological point established, though it gestures at Danny remembering his life from a later age.
Later, it becomes clear that Danny’s narration is as much for himself as for the reader.
It feels like he needs to make sense of his life any way he can. Perhaps that’s why it’s structured the way it is? Somewhat aimless but still captivating. This framing has Danny revealing details in a matter-of-fact manner. He does not drive to the points in his life where he is clearly a poor character with trepidation or obfuscation. He just remembers what happened. He did those things.
And that’s that.
Though this recount is undoubtedly unreliable due to, if nothing else, the fact that it is his own recollection of personal history, something which is interrogated when he and Maeve describe events shared by them differently quite often.
“I see the past as it actually was…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.”
This frame — if you’ll indulge an on-the-nose metaphor—essentially paints Danny and then hangs him there bare to be viewed and interpreted by the reader as they like. This humanizes and dehumanizes him. Sometimes he treats others detestably and illustrates no introspection whatsoever afterward. These moments are rare. But I expected to dislike him more.
Those moments when Danny dwells in his past, which he habitually never fails to do, undoubtedly condemn him and telegraph his future actions to the reader. A byproduct of this is that it also builds empathy in the reader for Danny; enabling them to, possibly, forgive his actions. Because to some degree, he and Maeve are both slaves to their desires and this inability to move on.
“I only understood what I’d lost.”
Even when they do move on and are doing well, they are continually pulled on a string by the allure of their former home, the Dutch House. They imagine the life they might have had as they repeatedly physically root each other in this impossible future and mostly terrible past.
This all creates a sense of inevitably as Danny’s story marches forward.
In the end, The Dutch House makes a mockery of the harbored emotions the siblings steep themselves in. The narrative gestures at restorative justice, but it does so by showing what toxic emotions, held onto for so long, may lead to. Even as it shows that life — and time — have no regard for notions like justice or morality or “fairness”.
“We had made a fetish out of our misfortune, fallen in love with it. I was sickened to realize we’d kept it going for so long, not that we had decided to stop.”
Things continue regardless. And they always will.
Growing old is a process of annihilating your previous self. Sometimes messily, sometimes with grace. Sometimes without wherewithal.
Things that were thought to be interminable and resolute prove to be different from a new perspective.
The reasons you had to hate people never existed or have long since gone.
Who you thought you were has been replaced with who you are now.
Just like the painting of Maeve hanging in the Dutch House for decades, you can stare at it and know what it means to you — but when you are given more context it becomes something entirely different.
“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.”