Translating that feeling on paper? That’s a magical writer right there. You can just tell, like with real people, who spells trouble. On another note, we’re diving right into spoilers from here, it showcases the author’s talents that within one page I can hate a character and yet know nothing substantial about them. “Five whole days with you at home,” she said, blowing smoke out the open window. That is to say, what a journey would await. The feelings evoked in me while reading The Dutch House were reminiscent of my reading experience with books like The Great Alone, Little Fires Everywhere, and A Spool of Blue Thread (they even have the similar “Oh, Danny”). She was so good at all that, despite the fact that no one had done it for her.” She told me repeatedly, relentlessly, that I was kind and smart and fast, that I could be as great a man as I made up my mind to be. She attended my basketball games and knew all my friends and oversaw my homework and kissed me every morning before we went our separate ways to school and again at night before I went to bed regardless of whether or not I wanted to be kissed. She taught me the proper way to hold a fork.

There was no crawling into bed with Sandy or Jocelyn when I had a bad dream in the middle of the night, and it never once occurred to me to knock on my father’s door. They loved us, I know they did, but they went home at the end of the day. They made sure we were washed and fed and that our lunches were packed and our scouting dues paid.

After our mother left, Maeve took up the job on my behalf but no one did the same for her. “Mothers were the measure of safety, which meant that I was safer than Maeve. If you needed any convincing to read this book, take this next passage as your sign:

The dutch house cover