Ann Patchett's newest novel is The Dutch House. From her Q&A with Hannah Beckerman at the Guardian:The protagonists in The Dutch House become obsessed with their childhood home after they’re turfed out by their stepmother. Do you think people too often get fixated on the past?--Marshal Zeringue
So many people just get stuck in their childhood and shoulder that burden through everything. It becomes their defining feature in life. Danny and Maeve [the novel’s main characters] chew on their loss of the house: they make it a fetish. I see people doing that and I just think, You can’t still be feeling this loss. You’ve made this your hobby.
Property is both a sanctuary and a burden in the novel. Was that something you set out to explore?
I hadn’t consciously set out to explore that and yet the further along I went the more I could see it and the more I could think about the burden of things. I am somebody who feels the burden of things. I think I would have made a swell nun.
The novel is also about memory: whether we can only ever view the past through the prism of the present. Do you think memory is ultimately unreliable?
Yes, I think that memory is almost a living thing for every person. I was in downtown New York on September 11 with a friend and...[read on]