It is quite rare to read the first couple of pages of a novel and just know that you will love the book. It is a delicious feeling and it happened to me with this story.
I have only read one other novel by Ann Patchett: The Dutch House. I liked it but for me it is not in the same league. I kept reading reviews of Tom Lake and there it was, prominent, in every bookshop window. I was intrigued by the title. Was this someone’s name or was it a place? Inevitably there was only one way to find out.
It is always a tricky authorial device to time slip a story; to move backwards and forwards between two periods of time, showing what is happening now and how this was affected by times past. Ann Patchett does this with effortless ease so that the narrative is not held back and the reader doesn’t find the writing stilted.
Interestingly, this is the first novel I have read that is set within the time of pandemic lockdowns. I wonder how many more are about to be published. Families forced to be close together for long and unknown periods of time is quite a gift for a writer. Things are said that might in normal times not be, secrets are split in unusual situations, confessions, old stories and forgotten histories are shared.
We are in north Michigan, near its lake for most of the story. The family live on a cherry farm and would normally pay regular pickers to bring the crop in. Now, of course there is no normal and even neighbouring families keep their distance. Lara, her husband Joe and their 3 grown up daughters must gather the harvest, working closely together. There is both time and opportunity for questions and for a long ago story to be told, discussed, dissected and pondered upon.
In a previous life, i.e. before the children, Lara had been an actress and had dated a boy destined to become a famous film star. And here we are shown the other part of the story. I was fascinated to find that the play around which ‘the past’ is entwined is ‘Our Town’ by Thornton Wilder. Many of you will know of both the play and the writer but until fairly recently I did not. My U3A literature group read the play a while ago and I realised I should have been familiar with it. In my defence, in all my various literature studies over the years, I had never touched upon American dramatists. So this play, which is iconic and seminal (I now know!) provides the firm base for the rest of the story.
It is whilst acting in ‘Our Town’ that Lara meets Duke and their naïve but passionate relationship begins. We live with them as they act out the play in a summer theatre at Tom Lake. Here are the intense sunshine filled days of growing up when everything seems possible, particularly if you have an agent who is talking about Hollywood. But then, Lara tears her Achilles’ tendon and finds herself in hospital and away from her acting friends. There is enforced quiet time in which to think, time to consider who actually is her friend and also to sort out what she wants from life.
Here, set out before the reader, is the choice that many people feel they have to make. Do you decide on a hard working, home centred life where you pay your bills, focus on safety and security for you and your family and try to be sensible or do you go for risk and adventure? The latter of course could offer fame, excitement and riches, or conversely, disaster of one kind or another.
Maybe because it was written during the Covid crisis when everything felt uncertain, this story is rich and abundant in the joys of friendship, the immersive qualities of family and the youthful confidence in love and hope for the future. A story that makes you feel better in difficult times, I think that is what this is. The pandemic is thankfully over but there are of course many events around us that can make life feel dark and bleak.
If you were to take this book on holiday with you, I don’t think you would be disappointed. A shady chair in a corner of the garden would also work.
Happy reading.