Siblings Maeve and Danny spend early childhood in The Dutch House, a spectacular Philadelphia mansion. They live there with their distant father and two loving servants after their mother disappears. Maeve becomes a surrogate mother to Danny in their mother's absence, and life is good until their Dad surprises them with stepmother Andrea, a cartoon-like evil figure straight out of the Brothers Grimm.
As they move into adulthood, Maeve and Danny remain extremely close to one another, and unable to leave the bitterness of their childhoods behind. When their mother surfaces many years later, their equilibrium is tested.
I loved aspects of this novel; Patchett's writing is always a pleasure, and Maeve and Danny's relationship is beautifully rendered. Other elements were unsatisfying, though: the stereotypical Andrea was hard to believe, and the saintly (and complicated) mother Elna never came into focus. Ultimately, while the surface plot of the novel seems to say that materialism is empty, the characters' lives revolve around material achievement in a way that gives the reading an incoherent feel.
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