Book Review: Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

Ann Patchett is one of my favourite authors so any new book by her is a must-read in my mind. I picked up my copy of Tom Lake the day after it came out and then saved it for a week or two until I could devote time to reading it while camping this summer (pictured above). It fully lived up to my expectations.

The present timeline of the novel is the summer of 2020, a cherry orchard in Michigan. Brought home by the Covid-19 restrictions, Lara’s three daughters have returned to the family orchard and are helping Lara and her husband bring in the harvest. Her daughters are in their 20s, each with dreams that have been put on hold by the pandemic. As the women work together picking cherries, the daughters ask their mother to tell of her long ago love affair with Peter Duke, a man who went on to become a famous actor.

Lara details how she fell into acting and became a cast member at a theatre company called Tom Lake. There she fell in love with Duke and they spent the summer together, along with the other cast members. We learn what happened to the cast and how Lara ended up where she is today. Each of her three daughters is also steadily revealed – their hopes and dreams, their uncertainties around their future, and the issues they face as young people in the 21st century.

The setting is fantastic in two ways. One: I’ve never particularly wanted to visit Michigan before but now I feel like I would love to spend a summer on a cherry orchard there. The work the characters are doing is hard and physical but they are surrounded by natural beauty and this continues to come out throughout the novel. Two: the setting of that 2020 summer. This isn’t a pandemic novel but setting it in that summer is an important factor of the plot. While Lara and her family aren’t always focused on the pandemic, there is a constant level of anxiety that features in their conversations, especially for her daughters. And, of course, it is the strangeness of that year that brings them together in one place. I expect we’ll start to see more novels using 2020 and Covid in such a way but this is the first I’ve seen like this.

My primary thought when I ponder this novel is how well-crafted it is. How everything comes together so satisfyingly and cleanly and yet never feels false. Patchett’s rate of revelation is terrific. The reader is constantly learning new things about Lara and her life then and now but it never feels like the author is withholding information from us. This is a thoughtful, reflective novel. About a woman past her youth who looks back at who she was and the people she loved with fondness and not regret. There is pain in the story and in the re-telling as Lara reveals herself in a new way to her adult children, but there is also a deep sense of contentment. It’s a feeling that I don’t think I would have recognized in the same way if I had read this book in my 20s. Lara’s daughters can’t quite see past the heartache and don’t yet understand that Lara wouldn’t change a thing in her past. This feels like a book written by a happy author and that makes it lovely to read.