Chevrolets, Camelot, CinemaScope… The postwar era epitomises a boomtime optimism in American national lore. In Ann Patchett’s eighth novel, The Dutch House, self-made property magnate Cyril Conroy can scarcely conceal his pride when he surprises his wife, Elna, with the mansion he has bought for them on the outskirts of Philadelphia. Yet this ratification of their upward mobility has a peculiar effect on Elna: overawed by the grandeur, she grows thinner and paler, rapidly “turning into a ghost”. It is only much later that the novel’s narrator, Danny, learns from his older sister Maeve how this change in their parents’ circumstances in 1946 hastened the end of their marriage: “Our father was a man who had never met his own wife.”
The immense “folly” at the heart of this novel is called the Dutch House by locals because of the provenance of its original owners rather than its architectural style. Appearing to “float several inches above the hill it sat upon”, the sumptuous building is a vaguely neo-classical confection with huge “storefront windows”, a marvel Danny considers “a singular confluence of talent and luck”. Yet the house, rather like America itself, harbours murky and complicated histories behind the glorious facade. Maeve recounts that their mother was especially unnerved by the belongings abandoned by the former owners, the Van Hoebeek dynasty, whose “stern and unlovely” life-size portraits adorned the drawing room. Fluffy, the resident nanny retained by the Conroys after moving into the house, elaborates on how the haughty respectability of these portraits was belied by bankruptcy and tragedy.
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