The Dutch House by Ann Patchett (audiobook)

genre: adult fiction

The Dutch House represents everything that Danny and his beloved older sister Meave have lost.  Once a symbol of the wealth their father had managed to acquire, a series of circumstances have forced the siblings to the outside of the home of their childhood and relegated its halls to their memories only.  And those memories, for better or worse, become the bedrock of the most fundamental relationship in each other's lives and as the years go by, The Dutch House and its inhabitants (both past and present) will continue to shape Danny, Maeve and those they come in contact with.

Now, having Tom Hanks read to me may have had a serious influence on how much I loved this book, but I think that was only a small part of it.  I really found myself enjoying this story of a family and the home that was a catalyst for so much pain.  It's not like a lot really happens and we go back and forth in time a lot but somehow I found myself completely invested in Danny and Maeve.  I cared about the Dutch House, the ghosts that haunt its halls and the choices that led to its ownership and loss.  Sometimes I wanted a little more emotion than I got, but I believed Danny as a narrator and as a man who spent his life adoring his sister, searching for the kind of man he wanted to be and wanting to untangle the threads of his life.  I appreciated the nuance of the relationships here, the way the past can require so much from the present when it comes to people we love or people we've demonized or people that truly have let us down but we have to figure out how to learn to get along with. This one will stick with me, I think.