I've started compiling my annual list of top ten fiction reads, and have found early on that some tough choices are going to have to be made. But (spoiler alert) with Ann Patchett's Tom Lake, I never doubted even before I finished it that the novel was going to end up somewhere very near the top of my 2023 ranking exercise. Simply put, Ann Patchett is a brilliant writer - and Tom Lake is one of the best books she's ever written.
The novel is set in the spring of 2020 shortly after everyone recognizes just how incredibly dangerous the new covid virus is going to be. On one northern Michigan cherry orchard, one couple is faced with financial devastation unless they can figure out a way to get their crop harvested despite the limited amount of hired labor available to them. After their three adult daughters, all in their early-to-mid twenties, come home to quarantine and to help with the harvest, the girls ask their mother to help pass the long hours spent in the orchard by telling them about the relationship she had with famous movie star Peter Duke when she was barely their age.
"The past, were I to type it up, would look like a disaster, but regardless of how it ended we all had many good days. In that sense the past is much like the present because the present - this unparalleled disaster - is the happiest time of my life: Joe and I here on this farm, out three girls grown and gone and then returned, all of us working together to take the cherries off the trees. Ask that girl who left Tom Lake what she wanted out of life and she would never in a million yers have said the Nelson farm in Traverse City, Michigan, but as it turned out, it was all she wanted." (Page 253)
The memories that Lara - and eventually Joe - share with Emily, Maisie, and Nell will change all of their lives. Their appreciation of, and love for, each other will become deeper and more intense than ever before as they learn the truths (most of them, anyway) about who their parents really are and how they became those people.
Ann Patchett is a tremendous storyteller whose characters become very real to the reader as she reveals them layer, by layer, by layer. This is a family on the cusp of major life changes just when the world decides to fall apart all around them. The daughters think they have life all figured out, but their parents are about to remind them of a universal truth: they were young and thought they had it all figured out one time, too. This is their story.
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| Ann Patchett jacket photo |
I am pleased you liked this as much as I did! In addition to your observations, I thought the way she handled Covid perfectly - it is there but secondary (or tertiary?) to what is going on - the storytelling and movement from present to past. I was glad she kept a secret or two although my sisters and I didn't like that incident in Belmont (I sometimes drive by that hospital) and found it jarring, compared to the rest of the book.
ReplyDeleteI got my book group to read Our Town last month and they agreed to read Tom Lake in February when I hope the library reserve list will have lessened.
Constance
I reacted to that hospital incident at the end exactly the same way. It bothered me in ways I find hard to explain. Maybe it's because I thought that the Lara character had grown so much to that point in the book that she would have never done what she did that day. I suppose I felt kind of let down by her in a way. It gave her a huge secret to withhold from her family, and that is what Patchett was going for, but I wish she had chosen something else.
DeleteCovid was very secondary to the plot, I think, other than getting all the characters in place and locked there for the duration of the novel. It set the overall tone of the present day portion of the novel, but they coped with it all so well that it was a good reminder that some good things happened in 2020, too, and that it was not all doom and gloom.
I'll be curious to hear what your book group thinks of it, Constance, especially that jarring surprise at the end.
Glad this one was such a winner for her. I've read a few of Patchett's books and she is a really good writer. I didn't love her ending in State of Wonder, but the rest of the book was amazing. I have this one on my TBR list for next year. :D
ReplyDeleteI predict that you will love it...at least right up to that one thing about the ending. :-)
DeleteCan you remind me about the hospital incident? I read it back in the summer. Are you talking about the character of Peter Duke at Belmont? I might have forgotten what happens. But I liked the ending of the book -- b/c it seems the character of Lara is happy about the choices she made in life moving to Michigan & being on the farm ... and b/c there's quite a nostalgic feel for the past.
ReplyDeleteI'll hint at it because I don't want to spoil it...involves the decision Lara makes when visiting him and the ensuing consequences. I agree that she ends up in a good place in her life, but it just didn't fee necessary to me for Patchett to go there.
DeleteOkay I remember now the incident. It was a bit dark.
DeleteI'm so pleased to read your review, Sam! Tom Lake will likely be y favorite book of the year.
ReplyDeleteSeems like I waited forever to get a copy from the library (on hold since July), but I can honestly say that it was well worth the wait. This is my favorite Ann Patchett novel of them all.
DeleteI will be reading this book sometime, maybe next year. Until then, I will be reading some of her earlier books that I have found here and there.
ReplyDeleteYou can't really go wrong by choosing an Ann Patchett novel to spend time with. This will probably remain my favorite of hers for a while, but all of them are very, very good, IMO.
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