Tom Lake
By Ann Patchett
- Release Date: 2023-08-01
- Genre: Fiction & Literature
Description
#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK
In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America’s finest writers.
“Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature.” —The Guardian
In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.
Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.
Reviews
Lovely storytelling
5By seraphina's happy placeEveryone will want to live at Tom Lake. This family has rich layers.A Warm Hug
5By Queen of Bean StationI loved everything about this book. The characters, some perfect, some flawed, but every single one was a warm hug at one point or another as this beautiful story unfolded. Even the few slow parts were beautifully written to culminate into an unexpected ending. Thank you Ms. Patcher for sharing this heartwarming and heartbreaking story with all of us.Through Their Eyes
4By jph_NHI enjoyed the perspective of how the story was told. By sharing the story via multiple conversations with the primary character’s daughters, the author is allowing the story to be its own character. I wasn’t sure this was the book for me, initially, but I soon found myself quite vested. A great read with some surprising revelations.Enjoyable
5By Sharonmm56Loved the writing. So relatable.Book Club miss
2By L TGRdRambling adventure with no real point. Read for book club or wouldn’t have read. Ugh!Not for me
2By one who reads occasionallyTrite. Didn’t care enough about the charactersWonderful Audio Book
5By emmabagThis is my first book by AP. I absolutely loved it. Rich characters. Full circle story. Relatable. Believable. Feels like it could be a true story but of course it isn’t. I could see this as a movie. Really enjoyed it!!One of the Most Boring Books Ever
1By Siobhan NThis is a seriously boring book, with the most boring characters. It was like reading the story of one of the two ladies in the SNL NPR skit. There is no way children would be that interested in their parent’s past.Meh!
2By SchlintzNo development of the characters or real insight into their behavior. The premise borders on the ridiculous - daughters hanging on their mother’s every word for details about her personal life? Most of us can’t get our kid to call us every two weeks. The NYC ending is just wacky. I felt like I was laboring through it, committed to finishing only because it was a book club read.Patchett usually delivers a better novel
3By The Best BookNot as compelling or interesting or well written as her other novels. Basically, a mother telling her daughters about her coming of age summer. Good story, not more than 3 stars.
