Ann Patchett is the author of eight critically acclaimed novels, including State of Wonder and Commonwealth. Bel Canto (2001) won the Orange prize, the PEN/Faulkner award and was a finalist in the National Book Critics Circle award. She has also written celebrated works of nonfiction, including This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage, and co-owns a bookshop in her home town of Nashville, Tennessee. Her new novel, The Dutch House, is a masterful depiction of ruptured family relationships, the power of sibling bonds and the nature of home.
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?
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 we were there at the World Trade Center when it fell. We had this huge life-changing day together. Several years later, we sat down and we talked about that day and it was as if we had been on different planets. We remembered every single thing about the day differently. Memory is unreliable and yet we are completely positive that we are right.
One of the novel’s central questions is how we deal with grief. Do you think culturally we are ill-equipped?
We don’t have enough time to deal with our grief. We’re almost embarrassed by grief. It’s so strange. We have two things absolutely in common: we’re born and we die. And everyone goes through those two experiences in a remarkably similar way, with a few medical details to separate us. But the facts are the facts: we weren’t here and then we’re not here again. But we can’t bear to think about it.
You have said in the past that you can’t write villains. But Andrea Conroy is an almost fairytale wicked stepmother. Why did you feel able to write a villain now?
I was interviewing Zadie Smith about the idea of writing an autobiographical novel. She said she was writing about the kind of mother she was afraid of being. You can write something very autobiographical that has never happened to you because it’s what you’re afraid of. And I wanted to write about the kind of stepmother that I would be afraid of being.
There are many fairytale elements in the book. Did you feel as if you were writing a modern-day fairytale?
Yes. I grew up on lives of the saints, which are fairytales. Whether it’s Hansel and Gretel or Saint Francis throwing out the last of his bread for the birds – it all comes together. Catholicism: it’s just kind of a big fairytale. The parables: fairytales. I’m a very plot-driven person and I think it all goes back to fairytales and parables and saints.
So were you reading parables rather than fairytales growing up?
I was reading them all interchangeably. When you think about it, they really are just the same. There are morals, the good people are lifted up, the bad people get their justice in the end, there’s a certain amount of magic involved. I can scarcely remember which goes into which camp.
Which writers have most influenced you?
Philip Roth, John Updike and Saul Bellow. Those were the authors my parents were reading when I was in high school and so those were the books that were lying around. I think influence has more to do with when you read something than who you read.
Which writers working today do you admire the most?
Zadie Smith, Colson Whitehead, Elizabeth Strout, Donna Tartt, Michael Chabon. I could go on.
What do you read for sheer pleasure?
Anything and everything by Kate DiCamillo. Give me a story about a rabbit who’s had a very hard time of it and I will be weeping. Give me a story about a mouse who has his tail cut off trying to save a princess: it means the world to me.
Has owning a bookshop changed your relationship to books?
I used to live my life reading EM Forster and Henry James. That’s what I used to read and love and dream about. Now I read everything in galleys [advanced copies]. I read 10 or 20 pages of something, chuck it aside and start the next thing.
Is there a book you wish you’d written?
Old Filth by Jane Gardam. It’s absolutely perfect. It’s one of those books that I think of as a universal donor: everyone I give that book to is thrilled by it. It’s a rare book that covers birth to death which is frankly impossible to do.
And a book you think is overrated?
I’m way too polite for that.
Is there a very famous book – contemporary or classic – that you’ve never got around to reading?
How much time do you have? All I do is read and all I do is realise how much I haven’t read. I’ve only read one Trollope novel.
Who would you like to write the story of your life?
David Sedaris. I love him and he’d embarrass me to death.
What’s the last great book you read?
The Resisters by Gish Jen. It’s coming out in February. It’s a book that means to save the world. I can’t begin to tell you how brilliant it is.
What books are on your bedside table to read next?
The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes and Deep River by Karl Marlantes. I’m currently reading American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins: it’s fantastic.
• The Dutch House by Ann Patchett is published by Bloomsbury (£18.99). To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99
