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MRP Communications is a woman-owned small business, specializing in communication strategy, content development, and training. Fields of focus include government, non-profit, international development, and healthcare. We work on international communication projects, and our public relations agency is located in Alexandria, VA.

Photo: Bloomsbury publishing — *Photo:* *Bloomsbury publishing*

What does HOME mean to you?
Is it a place? A group of people?
How does your home define who you are?
Who you want to be?

The Dutch House explores this sense of home and family through Danny and his older sister Maeve Conroy. Their bond as siblings is tested over and over again throughout their lives as they move physical homes and move back and forth between poverty and wealth.

Their relationships with their parents, their stepmom, their significant others, and their children shift their perspectives and their individual feelings about home – the home they grew up in, the homes they’ve made for themselves, and the homes they envision for their future.

At the core, they struggle with what to do when their childhood home, and a sense of entitlement and inheritance, is ripped from them. How do they recreate home for themselves? What kind of home are they entitled to? Will they ever be able to go back and to really feel at peace in their first home?

I thought this was an interesting story, highlighting the fine balance between people and place and what shapes who we really are inside. And while a place can influence our outlook and direction in life, it is the people and the relationships that will carry us through every moment that life throws at us.

Looking back, The Dutch House was not one of my favorite reads. I understood where Ann Patchett was trying to take me, but the language did not create that strong sense of place or connection to the Dutch House that I expected to feel. For me, the story was also a little difficult to follow, as it jumped around between time periods.

What really did make the book for me was Tom Hanks! His reading of the Audible book is incredible and adds a depth and emotion to the story that I really enjoyed.

Memories live in smells, sounds, and sometimes books. Author Azar Nafisi recalls her time in Iran through the novels of Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, and Vladimir Nabokov. She read their books in secret with seven of her most dedicated female students.

Each book opened new feelings about abuse, oppression, and required conformity—ideas that shaped their everyday reality. They were physically and emotionally beaten down by the political regime and stifled by cultural expectations.

Each book also taught perseverance and resilience. As the girls began to share their personal stories, they found strength together. They found their voice. They found a happiness and freedom they had not known before.

For Western readers, revisiting these classic characters through the perspective of these girls brings a new weight to the stories and their lessons. Daisy’s flashing green light at the end of the dock gains a much greater significance when you consider the individual freedoms and happiness that green light, just out of reach, represents to them.