5/13/2023 0 Comments The dutch house book coverOn the vanity of the master bedroom is a hairbrush and comb set in which the strands of the previous mistress’ hair are still entangled. EVERYTHING: the bedspreads in each room, closets full of clothes and cupboards full of dishes. In time, tragedy-including bankruptcy-struck, and the Van Hoebeeks left Elkins Park for good, abandoning everything. It is a wildly elaborate showcase house, stuffed with ornate furniture, its walls still covered with large, stern portraits of individual members of the Van Hoebeek family. The house in question, a three story building unlike any of the homes in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, (on the outskirts of Philadelphia), in the year 1946, was built and lived in for decades by the Van Hoebeek dynasty, about which little is known, except that their coming to America from the Netherlands brought them the kind of prosperity that made it possible to build a sumptuous three story house, described in the novel as vaguely neo-classical with storefront windows. Ah! I was most certainly wrong: I would give this book a chance. But then I saw the name Ann Patchett on its cover. Its title wasn’t appealing and it didn’t seem terribly exciting. When this book came up in conversation, I didn’t know what to make of it.
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