Tom Lake is a story about family. And all of the joy and irritation that comes with having family close to you. Lara is thrilled because thanks to the Pandemic, her three daughters have all returned home- she didn’t imagine she’d ever have the three girls back at home again, since they had all grown up and gone. But, soon enough Lara is coerced by her daughters into telling them the story of her romance with Peter Duke. It was the summer of 1988 at Tom Lake, where she was part of a production called Our Town. Each of the three girls is unique and we watch Lara as she navigates her relationship with each of them with varying degrees of success. In a way, Lara’s recounting of that summer serves to convince her daughters that there’s no place she’d rather be than right here on the family farm.
Patchett explores so much in this novel. I was surprised that it touches briefly on climate despair, and what that has meant for young people across the world when they think about their future. It explores young love- in Lara’s summer affair with Peter Duke and in her daughter Emily’s present day love life as well. This is contrasted by exploring Lara’s present day mature married love life. But the majority of Tom Lake explores a parent’s life before they became a parent. I think it’s fascinating to know that parents have had entire lives without their kids, something that can be so easy to dismiss and difficult to fathom when we think about our parents.
I adore Patchett’s writing. Just like The Dutch House that was narrated by Tom Hanks, Tom Lake is narrated by none other than Meryl Streep. So of course I reached for the audiobook. The audiobook production with Meryl Streep is needless to say sublime. With every sentence her narration is puncuated with emotion, which led me to wonder how different the experience of reading the book might have been. Everything about this novel is deeply Midwestern America- in the best possible way. I’m not a fan of reliving the Covid times in stories but this one is a cozy Covid-era story if there ever was one. The Pandemic is barely acknowledged and only serves as a distant backdrop. As a form of escapism I enjoyed being on a sun dappled cherry farm in Northern Michigan, whilst the PNW winter does its thing outside my window. But, perhaps what I appreciated most was that Patchett presents a happy family that is just as interesting as the unhappy, fractured ones typically explored in popular fiction.
Here are some of my highlights.
- “This could just have easily been a story about my having slept with Jimmy George Haywood. Who then went on to be a stupendously famous actor, though I’m pretty sure he went on to be Math Teacher somewhere in New Hampshire. I blame myself for what happened. I was hideously disloyal to the person I loved in order to be with a person I didn’t love at all. But I was also 16.”
- “Good marriages are never as interesting as bad affairs.”
- “The rage dissipates along with the love, and all we’re left with is a story.”
- “There is no explaining this simple truth about life: you will forget much of it. The painful things you were certain you’d never be able to let go? Now you’re not entirely sure when they happened, while the thrilling parts, the heart-stopping joys, splintered and scattered and became something else. Memories are then replaced by different joys and larger sorrows, and unbelievably, those things get knocked aside as well.”
- “Sapphire sky, diamond clouds, emerald leaves, ruby cherries. The magic with which Nell understands overwhelms me at times.”
- “…we remember the people we hurt so much more clearly than the people who hurt us.”
- “The girls were sitting in the lawn throwing handfuls of leaves in the air and then letting those leaves affix to them with jam. They were laughing like hyenas.”