Blinded by the hurt

Haunted House

Revolving around the nearly five decades of the Conroy family, the book is told from the perspective of Danny, as a 12-year-old boy, growing up, getting married and having a life of his own. Everything begins to change when each member leaves, from his mother "disappearing" to India, his sister Maeve leaving home for college, his father marrying his stepmother Andrea and then passing away. At each stage, the Dutch house stands there as an important witness, representing the rise and fall of a family and the hidden pain within.

Sách hay: Mê muội trong những tổn thương - Ảnh 1. — Writer Ann Patchett and the novel *The Dutchman's House*

Famous for her novels that explore emotions as well as poetic language, in this book, the Dutch house is especially depicted by the author as an image with many meanings. It is the "ripe fruit" of Mr. Conroy's efforts to rise up with two empty hands thanks to his real estate fortune, but at the same time it is the rejection of his sentimental mother, who thinks she lives happily in a house full of Dutch paintings, forgetting many suffering people still out there.

It is a symbol of a happy family, but at the same time it will be the source of brokenness and pain. That is, both sisters suddenly lost their parents one day as well as the memories of the two of them, when their stepmother Andrea heartlessly pushed them out of the house that raised them. The house stood there like a ghost, cursing those who dared to disturb and disrupt what was there. The house "moved" because of what it carried, both the expectations of a prosperous life, and also the unexpressed hatred that the marginalized individuals carried within themselves.

It can be seen that this novel has many points of intersection with Philip Roth's 1998 Pulitzer Prize-winning work, in which the wealth and rise of the previous generation is placed in a circle of skepticism about the world that is still full of hunger. If Roth's character The Swede became rich through the leather industry, then for Conroy, it is the real estate business. If The Swede's daughter is exiled, converted to Jainism as a punishment for her family's wealth thanks to supporting the Vietnam War, then Mrs. Conroy in this book also goes to India because she wants to care for the poor... America in both novels suffers from post-war trauma, causing vulnerable people to hollow themselves and others.

Between the choices

Most of the characters in this work are selfish, and then hurt those who stay. The mother left because she thought she lived too well and that was also the reason she left her children behind, believing that they would be raised in wealth. The father married a woman he did not love just to fill that void, with almost the only requirement being to love the property that his first wife hated. Then there was the sister who forced her younger brother to study medicine to extract the rare fortune because the stepmother took everything that should have belonged to them… All the characters made wrong turns, and they themselves will have to pay the price for it.

Sách hay: Mê muội trong những tổn thương - Ảnh 2.

People are always blinded by their own misfortune, so that mistake gradually turns into hatred, leading to revenge, becoming selfish. Selfishness is not only in the motive of their actions, but also when they return, continuing to open new abysses, where forgiveness or hatred will again trap them in a dilemma at the crossroads. The Dutch house is like a gathering place for ghosts named hatred, they constantly haunt and spread more horror, so that the more immersed in those memories and injuries, the harder it is to achieve forgiveness.

One of the successes of this novel is that Ann Patchett has created a narrative voice that lies at many intersections. The character Danny possesses both the superior masculinity given to him by his father, from his almost identical appearance to his interest in real estate business; but at the same time, he also has a hidden femininity, because from a very young age he lived in a house full of women: from his mother, sister, chef, housekeeper as well as the portraits hanging all over the house... Building a comprehensive, somewhat complex character and directing the story in that direction has made The Dutchman's House polyphonic and multi-meaning.

The author follows the characters' journey of maturity, thereby creating a great epic work. She also thoroughly builds a time-hopping plot, lying between the present and the past, thereby showing that although the context is the same, the train of thought is now different, guiding the characters to maturity as well as to liberate themselves. It is as if she wrote: "We see everything in the past from our point of view now, so we do not see the past as we did in the past. We see it with the eyes of the present and that completely changes the past".

This helps to bring a forgiving perspective to what happened, and also shows how time becomes the glue that heals the scars. Once one lets go of the mistakes, one can look back and see how much one has been lost in the illusion of hatred. A novel written with a compelling rhythm, exquisite language, and a plot that keeps one turning the pages.

Ann Patchett, born in 1963, is an American writer. During her writing career, she has been nominated for and received many prestigious awards, notably the 2002 PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize (the predecessor of the Women's Prize for Fiction) for her novel Bel Canto . In 2019, The Dutchman's House was released, and was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in the fiction category.

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