![]() Spoilt teenager Cecile lives a carefree existence with her widowed father and his mistresses, until one summer on the French Riviera, when he decides to remarry and she schemes to unseat his new wife. If you liked this, read: Bonjour, Tristesse by Francoise Sagan, translated by Heather Lloyd (Penguin Classics, 1954, reissued 2013, $19.80, Books Kinokuniya). There is only time, displacing everybody from what they believed was theirs - houses, bodies and lives. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets. There is no happy ending, not even for the villain. His first order of business is to buy the Dutch House, a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. ![]() ![]() Ultimately, this is a tale worn down by the drag of the mundane. Of more interest are the women who surround him, from doughty, selfless Maeve to his wife Celeste, whose single-minded pursuit of marital security echoes Andrea's. Patchett is a clear-eyed, unshowy writer with an unerring knack for depicting familial ties - here, the bond between siblings - and in her hands, the Conroys' house of dreams is exquisitely realised.ĭanny is a tad jejune as narrators go. Patchett is uninterested in the melodrama of sentiment, reserving her fascination for the nitty gritty of how people get by.Ĭharacters take up prosaic jobs - Danny in real estate, Maeve in accounting - and their longest, most steadfast relationships are with their former servants, whose pity at their plight transforms over the years into friendship. ![]() ![]() For all its fairy-tale trappings - evil stepmother, displaced children - The Dutch House is eminently practical. ![]()
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