Is "Tom Lake" Worth Reading?
A mother tells her daughters the story of her past while they pick cherries during pandemic lockdown.
Buy bookTom Lake is Ann Patchett's meditation on storytelling, family, and the stories we tell ourselves about our lives. Set during the early days of COVID-19, the novel follows Lara as she recounts her youthful acting career and romance to her three adult daughters while they work together on the family's Michigan cherry orchard.
The framing device is elegant: Lara's story unfolds through her retelling of her role in a production of Our Town, blending her personal history with Thornton Wilder's classic play. Patchett excels at creating intimate, lived-in family dynamics. The conversations between Lara and her daughters—Emily, Maisie, and Nell—feel authentic, full of the gentle teasing and deep affection that characterize close families.
The author's prose is characteristically warm and accessible, never showy but always precise. The cherry orchard setting provides a lovely pastoral backdrop that reinforces themes about cycles, seasons, and the passage of time.
However, the novel's contemplative pace won't suit all readers. This is decidedly a quiet book where the primary action is conversation and memory. Readers seeking dramatic plot developments or high stakes will find themselves disappointed. The integration of Our Town, while thematically rich, occasionally feels heavy-handed, and some may find the pandemic setting feels too immediate or raw.
The revelation that drives much of the narrative tension—concerning Lara's past relationship with a troubled actor named Peter Duke—ultimately feels somewhat anticlimactic. This book will deeply appeal to readers who loved Patchett's previous work, particularly The Dutch House, and those who appreciate character-driven literary fiction focused on family relationships. It's perfect for book clubs, offering rich material for discussion about truth, memory, and the stories families create together. Fans of Elizabeth Strout or Anne Tyler will find much to appreciate. Skip this if you prefer plot-heavy novels, dislike pandemic-era settings, or find extended flashback narratives tedious. Tom Lake rewards patient readers with its gentle wisdom about love, loss, and the complex relationship between life and art.
That's the general verdict — find out if Tom Lake matches YOUR taste.
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- The Dutch House by Ann Patchett — Patchett's previous novel similarly explores family dynamics and memory through the lens of siblings reflecting on their shared past.
- Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout — Both books feature intimate character studies of family relationships told through interconnected stories with a contemplative, literary tone.
- Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler — Tyler's novel shares the theme of family members gathering to revisit and reinterpret their shared history and relationships.
- The Midnight Library by Matt Haig — Both explore themes of life's alternate paths and the stories we tell ourselves, though Haig's approach is more fantastical.
- The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid — Features a similar structure of an older woman recounting her dramatic past to a younger audience, blending personal history with performance.
- Commonwealth by Ann Patchett — Another Patchett novel examining how families create and reshape their narratives across generations through storytelling.