The Dutch House, by Ann Patchett

 

Characters
The Dutch House	Others
Mr. and Mrs. VanHoebeek   Cyril Conroy Elna – first wife, mother Maeve Danny   Sandy – housekeeper Jocelyn – cook Fiona “Fluffy” – nanny   Andrea Smith – second wife Norma – pediatric oncologist Bernice “Bright” – yoga instructor	Celeste – married Danny Kevin Maeve “May”   Mrs. Buchsbaum – neighbor   Lawyer Gooch   Mr.  Otterson – Otterson’s Frozen Vegetables   Dr. Maurice Able – chemistry professor Alice- wife Nell - daughter

For Discussion:

NOTE: All page numbers are from hardback edition.

1.       Discuss Elna.   She gave up everything to serve the poor.  Was that admirable?  Fair to her family?   Could she have found a happy medium?   According to Fluffy, she “has a higher calling than we do, that’s all” (page 201).  Does that justify her actions?

 

2.       Elna had just entered a convent when Cyril came and took her home.   Should she have stayed there?

 

3.       Maeve and Danny keep going back to park in front of the Dutch House.  Fluffy said she did the same thing.  Why did they do that?

 

4.       What did you think about the Dutch House? Why did it engender such strong emotions, positive and negative, in people?  Would you want to live there?

 

5.       Why did Cyril marry Andrea?  Jocelyn said, “Your father thought that house was the most beautiful thing in the world and he found himself a woman who agreed” (page 110).

 

6.       Why did Maeve and Danny not like Andrea?  Were they justified in their feelings?   Danny thought, “The truth is I have plenty of memories of her being perfectly decent.  I just choose to dwell on the ones in which she wasn’t” (page 73).

 

7.       Could all the problems have been avoided if someone had thought to tell Andrea that Cyril had died?  Would this have stopped her from kicking Danny out?

 

8.       How much of the relationship between Andrea and Cyril’s children was his fault?  On page 77, when Danny was telling about Cyril staying away from the house, he thought, “it also seemed pretty clear he had married the wrong woman.” 

 

9.       Given his relationship with Andrea, why didn’t Cyril protect Maeve and Danny more in his will?

 

10.   When Maeve was away at college, Andrea gave her bedroom to Norma, but no one told Maeve until she came home.  Both Maeve and Norma remembered this event all their lives.  Did you think Norma wanted the room?  What did that action signify?

 

11.   In this same vein, why didn’t Cyril pay more attention to his own children?  Maeve rented an apartment on her own, not in a building Cyril owned, and he never noticed what she had done or asked about school.  Danny said, “The only thing my father ever saw in my sister was her posture” (page 109).

12.   The only reason Danny went to boarding school and then became a doctor was because those were the most expensive educational options.   Why did Maeve force him to do this?  Were you surprised he went along with these plans? 

 

13.   Danny did the same thing as his father – buying his wife a house without asking her opinion.  He thought it “had been one of the few truly romantic gestures I’d even made” (page 324).   Also, he did not know Celeste would have liked shelf runners like he was installing for Maeve (page 294). Why was he so oblivious to his wife’s wishes? 

 

14.   What did you think about the references to basketball?  Two different times Danny mentioned what he had learned from basketball.  The first was in the train station when basketball “had taught me how to move through a crowd” (page 127). The second was that during surgery he was “as conscientious as anyone else in my class but twice as fast, which just goes to show that basketball had served me well” (page 162).

 

15.   Discuss Celeste and her relationship with Maeve.  When they first met, Maeve and Celeste like each other.  What happened?  Danny thought that Celeste “gave her best effort to everything but still, her big wandering brain was underutilized, and would often turn itself against my sister” (page 224).  He also thought that their dislike for each other “was a habit” (page 239) and that if they had met without him, they would have liked each other.   Was there any way to repair this?

 

16.   When Elna visited Maeve in the hospital, Maeve was happy but Danny was angry.  Could you understand each of these reactions?   If Elna was in New York for years, why didn’t she contact her children?

 

17.   Were you able to follow all of the time changes in the storyline?   How well did the author signal these changes?

 

18.   Did you like the ending?  Why or why not?