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At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves. The story is told by Cyril's son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another. It is this unshakable bond between them that both saves their lives and thwarts their futures.… (más)
In the economic boom following the Second World War, Cyril Conroy's real estate investments take his family from poverty to enormous wealth. With it he buys the Dutch House, a lavish mansion in the Philadelphia suburbs. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves.
Danny Conroy grows up in the opulence of the Dutch House. Though his father is distant and his mother is absent, Danny has his beloved sister Maeve: Maeve, with her wall of black hair, her wit, her brilliance. The siblings grow and change as life plays out under the watchful eyes of the house's former owners, in the frames of their oil paintings.
Then one day their father brings home Andrea, a new stepmother. Though they cannot know it, her arrival to the Dutch House sows the seed of the defining loss of Danny and Maeve's lives: exiled from the house and tossed back into the poverty from which their family rose, Danny and Maeve have only each other to count on.
Told across the decades with Ann Patchett's inimitable blend of humour, rage and heartbreak, The Dutch House is a book for our times; of family, love, loss, and the powerful bonds of place and time that magnetize and repel us for our whole lives.
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
This book is for Patrick Ryan
Primeras palabras
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
The first time our father brought Andrea to the Dutch House, Sandy, our housekeeper, came to my sister's room and told us to come downstairs.
Citas
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
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.
Sandy and Jocelyn served champagne at the reception, wearing matching black uniforms with white collars and cuffs that Andrea had bought for the occasion. “We look like matrons at a women's penitentiary,” Jocelyn said, holding up her wrists.
The only way to really understand what money means is to have been poor... (p. 19)
But we overlay the present onto the past. We look back trough 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. (pp. 44-45)
The point, I wanted to say, was that we shouldn't still be driving to the Dutch House, and the more we kept up with our hate, the more we were forever doomed to live out our lives in a parked car on VanHoebeek Street. (p. 73)
There are a few times in life when you leap up and the past that you've been standing on falls away behind you, and the future you mean to back on is not yet in place, and for a moment you're suspended, having nothing and no one, not even yourself. (pp. 120-121)
Penn Station looked like a feedlot and we, the anxious travelers, were the cows standing in pools of melted slush, bundled up and pressed together in the overheated terminal. (pp. 124-125)
Boys in Columbia went to class, and boys in Harlem went to war, a reality not suspended for a friendly Saturday pick-up game. (p. 145)
They clung to their bitterness, both of them. (pp. 238-239)
We had made a fetish out of our misfortune, fallen in love with it. (p. 255)
Men leave their children all the time, and the world celebrates them for it. The Buddah left and Odysseus left and no one gave a shit about their sons. They set out on their noble journeys to do whatever the hell they wanted to do and thousands of years later we're still singing about it. (p. 297)
But when you think of saints, I don't imagine any of them made their families happy (p. 327)
Últimas palabras
Información procedente del conocimiento común inglés.Edita para encontrar en tu idioma.
At the end of the Second World War, Cyril Conroy combines luck and a single canny investment to begin an enormous real estate empire, propelling his family from poverty to enormous wealth. His first order of business is to buy a lavish estate in the suburbs outside of Philadelphia. Meant as a surprise for his wife, the house sets in motion the undoing of everyone he loves. The story is told by Cyril's son Danny, as he and his older sister, the brilliantly acerbic and self-assured Maeve, are exiled from the house where they grew up by their stepmother. The two wealthy siblings are thrown back into the poverty their parents had escaped from and find that all they have to count on is one another. It is this unshakable bond between them that both saves their lives and thwarts their futures.
Danny Conroy grows up in the opulence of the Dutch House. Though his father is distant and his mother is absent, Danny has his beloved sister Maeve: Maeve, with her wall of black hair, her wit, her brilliance. The siblings grow and change as life plays out under the watchful eyes of the house's former owners, in the frames of their oil paintings.
Then one day their father brings home Andrea, a new stepmother. Though they cannot know it, her arrival to the Dutch House sows the seed of the defining loss of Danny and Maeve's lives: exiled from the house and tossed back into the poverty from which their family rose, Danny and Maeve have only each other to count on.
Told across the decades with Ann Patchett's inimitable blend of humour, rage and heartbreak, The Dutch House is a book for our times; of family, love, loss, and the powerful bonds of place and time that magnetize and repel us for our whole lives.