Tom Lake - Ann Patchett
Genre: Literary Fiction Historical (?) ( I can’t wrap my head around the 80s being historical)

Tom Lake is written by Ann Patchett and performed by Meryl Streep. She brings this book to life in a truly perfect way.I feel like I can just stop now, and most of you would find the book to read. I loved every minute. I will see if I can effectively articulate why.

The novel begins with auditions for the play Our Town in a small New Hampshire town. After listening to a series of just awful Emilys, Laura puts her name on the audition list and gets that part that launches her career in acting as Lara. I love the play; I have read it, seen it, and taught it. Through a series of events, an older Lara finds herself doing summer theater at Tom Lake in Michigan, playing the part of Emily again. She has been “discovered” by this time, has made a movie in Hollywood, and is waiting for it to be released. Here she meets and is swept off her feet by Peter Duke who goes on to become a Hollywood legend. We learn of her summer through her own narration. In another timeline, as a fifty something year old woman, Lara is experiencing the Covid pandemic on a cherry farm in Michigan scrambling to harvest with her three grown daughters who have come home to weather the pandemic. Her eldest daughter Emily (of course!) was convinced as a belligerent, stubborn tween that Duke was father when she learns that Lara had dated him in her youth. They spend much of the time of the pandemic with her mother sharing out in bits and pieces the story of her summer at Tom Lake.

Her story is fascinating and poignant. We experience the highs of “first” love (passion), acting success, and summer and friendship. We experience the lows of betrayal, realization of limits, and, of course, friendship lost. All of these experiences are set against the idyllically rendered Michigan summer by the lake. These vignettes punctuate Lara’s pandemic experience with her daughters as she reflects on their childhoods and comes to know them better. We see here a family that truly cares for one another in spite of differences and misunderstanding. Her husband Joe and she clearly have a relationship that is strong and loving - that has weathered difficult crops and three small girls and settled into a life that brings both joy. Joe’s involvement in the summer at Tom Lake is introduced gradually and provides a nice layer to the story.

Ultimately of course, we reflect on the “awfulness” of life - that those who are living it don’t realize it properly. Lara has clearly gained wisdom over the course of her life, and I love that in spite of some very difficult mistakes and a series of losses, she holds no bitterness from this period in her youth, but rather finds the lessons learned, and connects them to the life that she finds beautiful - even in this rather horrific time in history. She notes that she should not necessarily feel joy at this time with her daughters, but she unapologetically does. She is treasuring moments much in the way Our Town suggests we should.

Tom Lake kind of makes me want to revisit the big moments in my life or perhaps I mean the small ones - those I overlooked and didn’t appropriately appreciate. I long a bit for the certainty that my life was lived fully, and rather than being mistakes, all of my experiences combined to bring me to a present joy. I like very much what Lara chooses to keep and what she chooses to let go.