Following Elna’s willful departure, Cyril’s sudden heart attack, and Andrea’s dismissal, the now-grown siblings establish a habit of parking on their old street with a view of their former home to hash out the past and consider their future. It is, most crucially, the site of narrator Danny Conroy’s cherished conversations with Maeve, his elder sister. It is also the site of Cyril’s second, catastrophic marriage to Andrea, a cruel stepmother who disinherits his children after his death. The “Dutch house” in a wealthy suburb of Philadelphia is the site of Cyril Conroy’s failed first marriage to Elna, a woman who flees the ornate excesses of the home.
In her eighth novel, Patchett revisits the concerns of previous works, including Commonwealth (the shifting plates of family life after divorce the bonds among siblings the process of forgiveness) and Run (the absent mother, the creation of family).
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