Tom Lake
Ratings94
Average rating4
In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America’s finest writers. “Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature.” —The Guardian A Reese’s Book Club Pick In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew. Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.
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Listened to the audiobook narrated by Meryl Streep. The story was extraordinarily fascinating or captivating on its own, but Meryl Streep’s narration was so fantastic, it carried the entire story! This is the story of a mother recounting her teenage summer when she acted in theatre and was so close to making it as a famous movie star, and how she dated someone who later turned out to be a Hollywood superstar. The story keeps us engaged, and the author takes us between different time periods, when Lara was her teenage self, and when she has grown up and is an elderly mother of three women. It explores the relationship between all characters, friends, lovers, daughters alike. Although, I feel like the story would have had a more complete feel to it if Duke’s point of view was included as well. We can all agree Duke was a jerk, but it would have been good to hear what he thought of his actions. 5/5 stars for Meryl Streep’s narration, and 4/5 stars for the story.
Calling all theatre lovers! Where are my theatre geeks? This is our book. The intersection of Chekhov and Our Town is too much for my BFA in Theatre heart to take. Because I played the Stage Manager in Our Town in High School I was knee deep into this book on page TWO. Auditions for Our Town? I am paying attention. I really enjoyed this book. Ann Patchett coyly gives us THREE SISTERS on a CHERRY ORCHARD and theatre loving parents who quote Anton Chekhov. OKAY I am belaboring the point but all of you out there with no point of reference for any of this you will love this study of young love, parental love, sibling love and then that final deep and abiding love that comes from knowing who you are and being happy with the life you've chosen. That is the story Ann Patchett has created here. She has cleverly woven in the pandemic to a bygone story of young love lost- but boy does that story rage bright and brilliant. I've read many stories with parallel timelines. This one is different. The story told during summer stock 25+ years earlier is a wholly developed story in and of itself. These are not flashbacks. Ann Patchett truly introduces us to these young wild characters and invests her storytelling prowess in them. This book is going to stick with me. I loved it.
🥱 I give Ann Patchett some stars because her prose is beautiful, but this book had no plot. After reading 25% of it I called it quits. It reins true to what it is, an average story told by a mother to her children to pass the time.
