Firstly, this book is all kinds of wonderful.
Wonderful is what many people expect from Ann Patchett, but this story is so cleverly woven together it’s like a masterclass in how to make an ordinary life into a beautiful artwork.
Lara is 57 and married to a cherry farmer named Joe. She is savouring having all three of her twentysomething daughters back on the farm during the pandemic. As they pick cherries, Lara tells the story of the summer she dated a movie star before he was famous.
That movie star was Peter Duke, and they were performing together in a summer production of Our Town at Tom Lake. Lara was brilliant in her role as Emily, but she never acted again. Finding out why she gave up her promising acting career to marry a cherry farmer is one of central questions of the book.
As a mum of three girls, I was fascinated by the relationship between Lara and her three daughters. Patchett cleverly interweaves the story she tells her daughters with the details she will never tell her daughters. The pandemic setting, handled so lightly, feeds perfectly into a story about appreciating the life you have and taking joy in the people and places around you.
But as one character cherishes the life they have built, another self-destructs. Tom Lake is a book that invites you to reflect on your own choices, the kind of story that can steer your life in one direction or another and help you see the way ahead more clearly.
-Katrina Roe, RRL Admin
