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Tom Lake: The Sunday Times bestseller - a BBC Radio 2 and Reese Witherspoon Book Club pick Kindle Edition
by Ann Patchett (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,890 ratings
#1 Best Seller in Family Life Fiction
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THIS SUMMER, DIVE INTO TOM LAKE – THE BREATH-TAKING NEW NOVEL FROM ANN PATCHETT
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER * A REESE WITHERSPOON AND BBC RADIO 2 BOOK CLUB PICK
'A new Ann Patchett novel is always cause for celebration ... and Tom Lake is one of her best'i
'This comforting summer read has it all ... Young love, sibling rivalry and deep mother-daughter relationships' REESE WITHERSPOON
'Filled with the moments I live for in a story' BONNIE GARMUS, author of Lessons in Chemistry
'One of the most beloved authors of her generation' SUNDAY TIMES
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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.
'One of our greatest living chroniclers of love and marriage … Expect wonder; Patchett always delivers' ELLE
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Praise for The Dutch House:
'Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature' Guardian
'The best book I've read in years' Rosamund Lupton
'Her finest novel yet' Sunday Times
'The buzz around The Dutch House is totally justified. Her best yet, which is saying something' John Boyne
'A masterpiece' Cathy Rentzenbrink
'Bliss' Nigella Lawson
The Dutch House was a Sunday Times top 10 bestseller w/e 28.09.19
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334 pages
1 August 2023
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Product description
Review
"Patchett's moving portrait of a woman looking back at a formative period in her life and sharing some--but only some--of it with her children...Lara's daughters are standouts among the sharply dawn characterizations...Patchett expertly handles her layered plot, embedding one charming revelation and one brutal betrayal into a dual narrative that deftly maintains readers' interest in both the past and present action."-- "Kirkus Reviews (starred review)" --This text refers to the audioCD edition.
Book Description
The astonishing new novel from the internationally bestselling author of The Dutch House and Commonwealth --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.
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Print length : 334 pagesBest Sellers Rank: 15 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)1 in Family Life Fiction (Books)
2 in Contemporary Fiction (Kindle Store)
11 in Romance (Kindle Store)Customer Reviews:
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,890 ratings
Top reviews
Top review from Australia
Denise Stevens
2.0 out of 5 stars Missing bits?Reviewed in Australia on 13 August 2023
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Pages 9-22 inclusive missing in my Kindle edition?
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switterbug/Betsey Van Horn
5.0 out of 5 stars A Buddhist blend of Grovers Corners and northern MichiganReviewed in the United States on 10 August 2023
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Appreciating the little things in life, the joy of day-to-day existence, and the love for your family and your work is what Tom Lake meant to me. Tom Lake refers to a (fictional) summer stock theater in northern Michigan in the 1980s, close to the locale of the current 2020 timeline--- a cherry farm (and pears, and apples). The late eighties marked a luminous period for protagonist/narrator Lara, a time that she walked the fine line between adulting and adulthood, coming of age amid a torrent of drama that swept her up in its fury. And then there was Our Town, the play within the novel that portrayed Lara’s life on the stage (and backstage).
Lara is telling her three twenty-something daughters about her short stint as an actress in her twenties, and the brief romantic affair with Peter Duke, a famous movie star before he was a famous movie star. The gorgeous cherry farm backdrop is like a staid but vivid character, with Lara, husband Joe, and the three girls all together for the first time in a while. Due to the pandemic, they don’t have the usual crew to help pick the fruit, so the storytelling unfolds as the family works the orchard during harvest time. Like the cherries, some parts are sweet, some tart, and all of it is juicy.
I felt the air, inhaled the scents, the cherries, the land and the whole layout of the farm while reading. And there is the kindness, too, of this family, whose flaws are also part of their strengths. The chaos of Lara’s life as a young woman is juxtaposed with the serenity of her life now, and the two timelines fluidly alternate, sometimes gently, at other times with piercing intensity. And every storyline has at least two. So, when you read about Lara in the past, or present, you just can’t help sniffing around to see the connections, of what surprise is crouched in the corner or hidden behind the door. I verily slipped into Lara’s character and imagined what decisions I would make as her, given so many pressing options and dilemmas.
Ann Patchett nails it every time, her characters are complex and her graceful pace is measured even when events are brutal. Lara is a radiant work-in-progress during her young years, many readers will see themselves in her. I was a local stage actor in Austin during my twenties, so I immersed myself in Tom Lake, pretending to be Lara acting as Emily Gibbs and then back to Lara again. The two timelines showed the difference between the fiery summer love of youth and the deep, tender, and mature love of family that you helped to create. The high points were explosive, even when they were pin-drop quiet. Lara’s low points stirred me almost to tears; I could feel her pulse against mine.
If you’ve never seen a production or haven’t read Our Town, you’re about to get a spoiler’s worth in the novel. But I think Ms. Patchett has surmised that most of her readers are already familiar with Thornton Wilder’s play. She coalesced Our Town and Tom Lake together in a way that reveals her refined skill of integration. Tom Lake and Our Town were separate but conjoined. I know that doesn’t make sense, but it will when you read the book. She also quotes Chekhov at pique (and even peak) intervals; she shares the Russian writer’s work with spare but specific devotion.
I recently learned that Patchett has never owned a smart phone, and doesn’t herself do social media (she talks to the camera and her staff completes the rest). She has never used Google, or researched on Wiki—she does it the old-fashioned way. And perhaps she’s that slightly eccentric but lovely gentlewoman you see carrying paper road maps!
Tom Lake is thoughtful, deft, and life-affirming. (It isn’t a pandemic novel, even though it takes place during that time). There’s comedy, tragedy, drama—a look-back-at-your- own-life kind of book. It’s classic Ann Patchett.
There’s this passage that really tickled me from the book. It’s toward the end but not a spoiler, it’s thematic with the rest of the narrative. Lara was so busy recounting the past for her daughters that she forgot to make lunch, which she said she should have been working on while talking. “The past need not be so all-encompassing that it renders us incapable of making egg salad.” Priorities!
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Barbara M.
5.0 out of 5 stars A lovely bookReviewed in the United States on 13 August 2023
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I loved this book. I have lived in my own parts of New Hampshire and Michigan, and my children spent long sections of their lives acting in theatre programs so all of the background felt familiar and quite real to me, taking me back into my own past as I read it.
The difference between the actor and the character they play is so clear in this book. Watching a teenager play a part gives you a different view of that kid. He may be wild and silly in real life but after you’ve seen him play the stage manager, you can never again see him as simply a silly kid. You’ve seen possibilities of depth and character. It may not come to fruition, but it is always there when you interact with him again. It’s a sort of double vision: the person he is now juxtaposed on the person he may, with luck, become.
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Mary Ward
5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful bookReviewed in the United States on 4 August 2023
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What I love about Ann Patchett's books are they have a lovely slow, simplicity to them. They take you on a journey and you love every minute of it Tom Lake does just that perfectly. During the pandemic, when Lara's three daughters are stuck working the cherry orchard with their parents and living at home together, Lara tells them the story about Peter Duke, a famous actor now, but the young man she had a relationship during summer stock at Tom Lake. The play was Our Town and Lara always felt at home playing Emily, as if they were the same person. Her memories take her back to Peter, his brother, lovingly dubbed St. Sebastian, and her best friend Pallace. A lot happens to this group and not always good. This time also takes her to her future in the cherry orchard that she and her husband Joe, take over from his aunt and uncle.
Lara is very happy with the way her life turned out and the memories just stir up wishes for all the other's lives. I love her relationship with her daughters. I love the relationship with her husband. There is such a quiet contentment with them all. I think that is the perfect expression for how I felt reading this book, a quiet contentment.
I will read anything Ann Patchett writes and I know in my soul, I will love them and be content with the time spent.
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Susan Bass
5.0 out of 5 stars A truly beautiful work of fiction from one of our very best writersReviewed in the United States on 13 August 2023
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Ah, this book! In it, the terror of pandemic recedes becoming the frame for a story about family and love and the things that really matter in life. This is Lara’s story, the girl who inhabits Emily Webb from Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. As she and her girls pick the yearly cherry crop on their Michigan farm, pandemic rages and the family must survive without the help of their yearly pickers. Lara becomes a kind of Scheherazade, telling another chapter of her story to pass the time. The story of her life and loves unfurls with a depth and beauty that makes this the best book I have read in years. A shallow reader may miss its lovely darkness, just as a shallow viewer can miss the same in Our Town.
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Helen L. Swany
5.0 out of 5 stars WHICH PATH, LAKE OR ORCHARDSReviewed in the United States on 14 August 2023
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Tom Lake leaves the reader with a hint towards finding meaning and happiness in life. What is lasting, what is important and how do young adults find these answers. Recognition at being good at something, acceptance by peers, wild hormones, and love twist the path.
Ann Pritchett's plot exposes her young characters to possible life choices including the excitement of ups and downs as actors, contrasted with a traditional role of more refined enjoyment that a strong attachment to the land and family can bring.
This theme is subtly introduced as characters audition and act in the timeless play OUR TOWN. Personalities are well developed, descriptions of topography give them reader visual pictures, and the questions of what will bring meaning and happiness are answered - at least for this reader.
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