Tom Lake

Locations
Call Number: Fiction / Patchett, Ann, Adult Book / Fiction / General / Patchett, Ann
On Shelf At: Pittsfield Branch

Recalling the past at her daughters' request, Lara tells the story of a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance, which causes her daughters to examine their own lives and reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Great summer novel submitted by srlorand on August 10, 2023, 11:24am What to read while you’re waiting for a copy of this delightful new novel to be available? I have three suggestions: Ann Patchett’s recent essay collection _These Precious Days_; Thornton Wilder’s play _Our Town_; and Chekhov’s play _The Cherry Orchard_.
In the summer of 2020, the narrator and her husband are happy to have their grown daughters back home on their northern Michigan cherry farm. While harvesting cherries together, the narrator tells her daughters more about a youthful romance than she had previously revealed (while still withholding some private details). Along with that storytelling, Patchett artfully weaves in the narrator’s reminiscences of her daughters’ childhoods and the daughters’ hopes and fears for the future as climate change threatens the trees in the coming decades.

Mixed feelings submitted by mowjac on August 13, 2023, 4:59pm I really enjoyed the majority of this novel, which weaves stories of a farm family during the pandemic in and out of the mother's past as an actress in summer stock. But there is a major reveal at the end that casts the narrator and her story in a whole different light.

A beautiful love letter to theatre submitted by skfitzsimons on August 22, 2023, 1:34pm Another wonderful read from Patchett--while I wouldn't have thought of it, the way that she writes and her worldview reminds me very much of Thornton Wilder. Putting Our Town into relief against the early days of the COVID pandemic was really moving.