About the Book:
This is a story about Peter Duke who went on to be a famous actor.
This is a story about falling in love with Peter Duke who wasn't famous at all.
It's about falling so wildly in love with him – the way one will at twenty-four – that it felt like jumping off a roof at midnight.
There was no way to foresee the mess it would come to in the end.
It's spring and Lara's three grown daughters have returned to the family orchard. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the one story they've always longed to hear – of the film star with whom she shared a stage, and a romance, years before.
Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents lead before their children are born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart.
Published by Bloomsbury
Released August 2023
My Thoughts:
I don't think Ann Patchett could write a bad book. She just has this unique ability to imbue everything, even the mundane, even simple conversations, with that little bit extra. She is intensely readable. And this latest novel of hers, is exactly that. A delight, and so very readable.
What the book description doesn't disclose, is that this novel is set during the covid pandemic, specifically, the lock down. The grown daughters are at home, because there is nowhere else they can be. The family are spending each day working the cherry trees because the seasonal workers aren't able to come. And whilst working away, Lara tells the girls the story of her summer at Tom Lake. The girls have heard this story before, at least, part of it in different telling's, but this seems to be the first time Lara tells them the whole story - or at least, they think she's telling them the whole story. We, as readers, get the whole story, but the girl's still get an edited version. Because after all, daughters don't need to know everything about their mothers - right?
I did spend quite a bit of time wondering why the girls were so obsessed with this story, but we do find out later on in the novel what's prompted them to prod their mother about her former boyfriend. I'd say that the only thing that tipped my hand to give this novel four stars instead of five is the fact that the novel is essentially, all the parts about motherhood, family, love and ambition aside, about the American play, Our Town. Which I've never heard of. I'm pretty sure if you knew all about Our Town, this novel would make more sense and be a whole lot more engaging in the theatre sections. I did find some of the theatre scenes, particularly the ones that went on about the characters and scenes within the play, a bit saggy in terms of holding my attention. But I did love the rest, the telling of the story in real time, the emotion throughout all of it, Lara's own story from small town girl to actress back to small town girl. She was a great protaganist.
This novel is pretty much a delight right the way through with the occasional heavy parts, deeply emotional in some sections, and infused with familial love. It was a wonderful read, quite uplifting, which is saying something for a novel set during the covid pandemic. But that's Ann Patchett for you. She really is in a class of her own.
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