That feeling when you discover a new favourite author…

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

I have just finished Tom Lake by Ann Patchett, have you read it? I was totally influenced by social media and the beautiful cover, (I love daisies) and picked it up a while ago on a bookshop trip. I can’t believe it has sat on my tbr pile for so long, it blew me away with how beautifully and simply written it is and I could have come to this wonderful writing so much earlier. Definitely a 5 star read and a hard recommendation from me.

The novel is a gentle read but emotionally powerful at the same time. The main protagonist is Lara and she is sharing with her three daughters the story of a love affair in Tom Lake, a summer town in Northern Michigan where she goes to star in the play “Our Town”. The novel is set in the summer of 2020 and all three adults daughters are home on the family cherry farm because of the pandemic. The narrative switches between the two time lines as Lara tells the story.

The gentleness comes from the way the narrative is told, a mother to her adult daughters, whilst picking the cherry harvest, wanting them to understand her better/ It also includes what she doesn’t share with her daughters, after all we have parts of us that we want to keep sacred from others, our children in particular, there are just things they don’t need to know. It depicts the nuanced relationships within a family and how they play out. It is just full of love for people and places. I felt totally transported to what I now imagine is beautiful rural Michigan.

Even though my life has been very different from Lara’s, so much resonated with me, in particular the way the pandemic, (even though it was scary, frustrating and overwhelming), offered a unique opportunity to share time with my family, without many of life’s normal distractions, (I realise that I was quite lucky not to have small children at that time). I thought it captured that dichotomy of emotions so well. But I want to be clear this is not a ‘pandemic book’, it is just a back drop to how the story is told.

‘As sad as I am for the suffering of the world, I wish to keep this exact moment, Emily on the beach in my arms’

Ann Patchett from Tom Lake

There is also wonderful paragraph of an ordinary moment at the dinner table, when one of the daughters answers her phone. They normally don’t allow phones at the table, but times aren’t normal so they have made exceptions. At the end of the paragraph its simply says ‘Jo and I turn off our phones because everyone we want to talk to is here’. I know that I am lucky to have my children around for a while longer, before they move out and move to the next stage of their lives. This simple sentence landed in my heart and filled it with gratitude. That’s quite a special thing to do with words isn’t it.

Tom Lake isn’t a long book and only took me a couple of days to read, but I felt that I had been with the family for ages, and felt sad leaving them behind. I immediately wanted to get on a plane and head to the cherry farm, to sit down at the kitchen table and catch up with Lara about how the family are doing now the pandemic is behind us and how her, Jo and their daughter’s have moved on with their lives.

If you enjoy Elizabeth Strout’s or Catherine Newman’s books, you will love this, or vice versa!

Have you read any Ann Patchett? If so can you recommend which novel I pick up next, because I am definitely seeking out all her work!