The Dutch House

Ann Patchett doesn't need any introduction from me, having already written several highly acclaimed books. But, what you may not know is that she also owns an independent bookstore in Nashville, TN (Parnassus Books) and is an activist for independent bookstores. Yay!

In their younger years, Maeve and Danny Conroy lived in the titular Dutch House, a mansion outside Philadelphia that their father bought at auction in 1946, completely furnished, as a surprise for his wife. Unfortunately, his wife, Elna, hated the house and walked away when Maeve was 10, Danny was 3. Ostensibly she went to India to work with the poor; they haven't heard from her since. Their father managed with the help of housekeeper, cook and nanny for a time until a young widow, Andrea--18 years Cyril Conroy's junior--gets her heart set on living in the house.  She has two younger daughters in tow and as soon as she moves in, things begin to change--and not for the better, in Maeve and Danny's opinion. When Maeve goes to college, Andrea moves her belongings to an attic bedroom and moves her older daughter into the room. Maeve never comes back to the Dutch House after that. When Cyril Conroy unexpectedly dies of a heart attack, Maeve and Danny are dismayed to find that Andrea has convinced her husband to put her name on all of the business and personal assets; Maeve and Danny inherit nothing. She kicks Danny out of the house and they are left penniless. Maeve is already working as a bookkeeper and living in a one bedroom flat in a nearby town. The lawyer does say that there is an educational trust that will cover Danny's education and Maeve is determined to take every penny she can for Danny. So he is sent off to an expensive boarding school (Choate) and when he finishes, she makes sure he gets into Columbia and then into Columbia med school. Danny honors Maeves wishes because she is all he has, even though he has no interest in being a doctor and really just wants to follow in his father's footsteps, buying and fixing up old buildings. Maeve remains fixated on The Dutch House, driving over to sit out front in her car every time Danny comes home from school for a visit, and even long after. Danny seems to get on with his life as he wants it after he finally finishes his residency. He gets married, has kids, buys up and renovates old buildings. When Maeve suffers a heart attack, their mother makes an appearance and, surprisingly to Danny, Maeve accepts her into her life. That is, until Andrea seems to need Elna more.  Complicated relationships and obsessions characterize every aspect of this book. Ann Patchett said in an interview with The Guardian in 2016 that "I’ve been writing the same book my whole life — that you’re in one family, and all of a sudden, you’re in another family and it’s not your choice and you can’t get out.” That pretty well sums up this situation here, as well.

Glowing reviews from NPR,  The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, and Kirkus.

Stranger in the Lake

I was not familiar with any of Kimberly Belle's earlier works, but this was a well done thriller that kept me engaged throughout. Charlotte (nee Charlie) was born to a mother so addicted to drugs that nothing else mattered, including food for her children. Young Charlie was often left to care for an always hungry infant brother. But she escapes the trailer park and eventually falls in love with and marries an older man, Paul Keller, an architect to the rich who like to build their second homes in the tourist town of Lake Crosby, NC. Now Charlotte (after legally changing her name) works at Paul's company as a client relations manager, and lives with him in his beautiful house overlooking the lake. She feels lucky never to have to worry about being hungry or cold, again. She chooses to ignore the small town rumors that Paul was somehow complicit in the drowning of his first wife. But when a woman Charlotte had seen Paul talking to in town turns up dead and floating under their lakeside dock, Charlotte begins to wonder if she has been blind. Then Paul disappears for 2 days while the investigators, including Micah, underwater retrieval expert, son of the police chief, and Paul's best friend, scour for clues as to the woman's identity and what she was doing in town. Charlotte initially lies to the police about having ever seen the woman and backs up Paul's assertion that he'd never met her. But as Charlotte digs deeper, she find that Paul and his two best friends have all been keeping a dark secret for decades that the dead woman was about to bring into the light. All three have a motive, but who would be willing to kill to keep the secret. Not a conventional happy ending, but a strong female protagonist and some great plot twists will make this a worthwhile diversion. Review available from Publishers' Weekly.

Chosen Ones

Author Veronica Roth is probably best known for her Divergent series of YA books, which were all made into movies. This book also does a great job of world building but started out so slowly that it wasn't until Part II that I really got engaged. I would agree with Publishers Weekly that the frequent and distracting "inclusion of news reports and government documents initially slow the pace." In Part I, we meet five adults, who, based upon a prophecy, were chosen in their teens to defeat The Dark One. All are still friends and are periodically called in by the governmental powers that be to consult on magical anomalies in the world. But that same government entity wants to control magic and therefore seeks to create some as well, which results in the death of one of the Chosen Ones, Albert. On the 10th anniversary of the defeat of The Dark One, three of the Chosen Ones are pulled into a parallel universe where dark forces are still wreaking havoc and told they must find a way to defeat them or risk their own world, Earth, also being destroyed. Part II is set in this version of Chicago and the United States where magic has been such a pervasive part of everyone's life that fashion accessories are worn to help the general populace work everyday magical events like opening doors by whistling. There are some, like the official who summoned the Chosen Ones, who are clearly stronger in magic than others, and appearances can be deceptive; deciding who to trust divides the three friends from each other when they will absolutely need to work as a team to preserve this different world as well as their home. The narrator is Sloan Andrews, who has hidden dark secrets from her fellow Chosen Ones about how she came to control and then destroy a magical relic she used to help defeat The Dark One. She still suffers from PTSD and chafes at the constant recognition and media attention that results from her celebrity as one of Earth's saviors. Although Sloane's character continues to develop throughout the book, the New York Times rightly notes that, for the other Chosen Ones, "...the characters we were starting to care about [in Part I] are put to one side [in Part II] along with Sloane’s relationships with them; new ones are quickly pushed into a prominence that feels unearned, especially after the slow build of the first half of the book." As Kirkus points out, though, Roth does a good job of addressing the question, "What happens to heroes after they save the world?"