TOM LAKE

by Ann Patchett

Ever since I read Bel Canto when it came out in 2001, Ann Patchett has been one of my favorite authors.  She keeps writing the most amazing books:  Truth & Beauty (2004); Run (2007); State of Wonder (2011); Commonwealth (2016) (read review here); The Dutch House (2021) (read review here).  And she has outdone herself with her latest novel, Tom Lake.

Patchett opens the novel with Lara and her three grown daughters together on the family’s cherry orchard in northern Michigan.  The girls are persistently asking their mother to tell them about the time she was in summer theater at Tom Lake and starred with Peter Duke, now a famous actor, in a production of Our Town by Thornton Wilder.  Not only did they act together, they had a romance, as well.  Patchett artfully crafts the two tales, one of the mother and her three daughters harvesting a vast orchard of cherries during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the other of her early adulthood brush with romance and success as an actress.

Tom Lake is similar to The Great Believers in that it too explores several different types of love. Among those that Patchett develops is how our perceptions of love change as we grow older and raise children.  We see Lara’s daughters struggle to reconcile the woman that they know as their mother and the woman she was before they existed.  Their mother’s story about Tom Lake causes them to rethink their ideas about romantic love and to look at their mother and father – and their marriage – in a very different light. Patchett masterfully, yet subtly, weaves together the stories of the two time periods and allows the reader to discover the depths of Lara’s compassion both in the past and in the present. Tom Lake is an absolute gem that I promise you will love. (Liz)