Ann Patchett

The best-selling author on totally rewriting her new book, being mad at her neighbors and the inaccuracy of memories

- BELINDA LUSCOMBE

Your new novel, The DutchHouse, is about families who circle in and out of a grand house in Pennsylvania. Did you have a particular house in mind?

No. It was important to me to only have a few details because I believe that everybody has one, if not several houses, that they are completely in love with that they’ve either been in or been past. The book was going to be called Maeve, and because I own a bookstore, I really did understand that The Dutch House was a much better title. The words Dutch and house have the same number of letters; I knew it would look really good. To me, the house is just symbolic of the life. It’s a book about wealth and poverty, and the sort of whiplash of going back and forth between those two states.

The book is about Maeve, but from the point of view of her brother. Did you have any trepidation about writing as a young man?