Tom Lake
Ann Patchett
312 pages - 2023 - fiction, coming-of-age
July 1st, 2024 — July 7th, 2024
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐½
Since I was a kid, I have had a special fondness for lakes. My dad has ten siblings, meaning I have dozens of cousins, and we would often rent lake houses for a week in the summer, cram as many people as we could in there, and party hard all night long.
There’s just something idyllic about being on the shore of a lake, seeing the trees swaying in the distance, across the glistening water. I grew up near the Jersey Shore, so I have never loved beaches; I don’t like the sand, the heat, the crowds, the waves, the vastness of the ocean… but the lakes I was fortunate to visit had none of those. They were always perfect, made even more perfect by the company.
I also had the fortune of finishing this book while at a small lake (technically a pond, but we won’t get into semantics) surrounded by my roommate’s family. I had visited before, but this time, this holiday, I felt like I was more integrated into their little bubble. It felt like I was on those family vacations of yore.
That’s probably a reason I enjoyed this book so much, but I also think it was so wonderfully written. Admittedly, there is not much of a story—at least, not one moving from present to future. But it’s a story of family, which always hits me hard.
My favorite part of the book is learning where all the names come from. The crux of the story is that a mother is telling her three now-adult daughters about the summer she spent at Tom Lake, acting in a play with a now-famous movie star, and the small fling they had. We, as an audience, have a good idea of where we’re going, but we don’t know entirely how we are going to get there, and I think that’s what compelled me to keep going.
Plus, the family lives on a cherry orchard in northern Michigan, which sounds like an absolute dream. Even in describing the financial struggles, and the pain of having to do so much work, it sounds like it would all be worth it.
Summary (Spoilers!)
We start with our first flashback, hearing Lara (then spelled Laura) tell us about when she and her friend Veronica helped run auditions for the Thornton Wilder play Our Town. In the play, there is a character named Emily, a young girl, and Laura notes that all of the people auditioning for Emily are doing it wrong. Either they’re overacting, or they don’t fit the part; she’s got different criticisms, but she knows that none of them are right.
She takes a chance, then, and decides to audition herself. She goes at the end. Possibly because they were tired of seeing less-than-good auditions, and possibly because she actually was that good, Laura actually gets claps at the end of her audition, and she lands the part.
Her acting career starts taking off with the help of her “uncle” (he may be a close family friend?) named Ripley. He books her a part in a movie and she films it; while waiting for other roles, he lands her the same part, Emily, in a production of Our Town in northern Michigan for the summer stock.
Now going by Lara as her stage name, and now in her early 20s, she goes to Michigan for the play. It’s there that she meets Peter Duke, not famous then but definitely an actor in the deepest sense of the word. He’s mysterious and handsome, and they begin a fling almost immediately. This causes a little controversy, since he plays her father in the show, but they work well together.
At the summer stock, Lara also meets Pallace, her understudy; Sebastian (nicknamed Saint Sebastian), Duke’s brother; Joe, the assistant director; and Albert Long, also called Uncle Wallace for his long-running television character, the big name that will bring people to the show.
Throughout the summer, they rehearse for the show, while also taking breaks to go swimming in Tom Lake nearby. Pallace is also performing in Cabaret, and lands the understudy role for Lara as well in an upcoming production of Fool For Love, in which she and Peter Duke will play lovers. There is a great deal lined up, especially with Lara’s movie on the horizon, which will grant her an even bigger name.
One night, though, Uncle Wallace falls ill right at the end of the show. He is replaced by Joe, the assistant director and the only person who knows the show well enough. Joe brings the group to his family’s cherry farm in northern Michigan one day, and they all fall in love. Then, while playing tennis one day on break, Lara ruptures her Achilles, meaning she cannot walk and cannot perform.
Pallace takes on her role, and Lara is saddened seeing how well she does. She knows that this means her days of being Emily are over, since everyone eventually outgrows being Emily. She also realizes, during this performance, that Pallace and Duke are having an affair, despite her romance with Sebastian and Duke’s romance with Lara. Enraged, Sebastian punches Duke, and Lara does not see him again.
There is not much more to the past; we learn that Lara stayed with her grandmother, a seamstress, until her passing, and eventually she married Joe and they took over the cherry farm.
In the present day, there are whispers through the book about the global pandemic. Since the three girls cannot go anywhere, they have returned home to help with the harvest, and this story is told to them while the family picks cherries.
Their oldest daughter, Emily, is recently engaged to marry a boy from a farm nearby, which means their families will get to combine their farms and help each other. To Joe’s dismay, Emily and her fiance Benny say that they are not planning on having children, because of the state of the world.
Maisie is the middle daughter, and she is studying to become a veterinarian. She is called to the nearby farms to help take care of animals. Nell is the youngest, and she also wants to be an actress. Learning how her mother gave up the life that she dreamed of is difficult for her through the story.
At the end of the book, the story has been told; unexpectedly, Sebastian shows up at the farm, much older but still recognizable. He has brought Duke’s ashes, as Peter Duke had drowned a little while back. He nearly bought the cherry orchard after seeing it that one day; instead, he paid the family so that he would have a plot in the cemetery after he passed. The family welcomes in Sebastian, all satiated with the stories of the past.
Sweets and Tarts
As I mentioned, I think the most satisfying part of the story is learning where the names came from. Right away, it is evident that Emily is named after the character in Our Town. Learning how important the role is to Lara, though, gives it even more depth throughout the story.
Maisie was the name of Joe’s aunt, who owned the farm on the first day Lara visited. Nell was the name of Lara’s grandmother.
But my favorite reveal is that the assistant director’s name is Joe. We have heard him referred to as the assistant director, and we have heard, in the moments of present day, that Lara’s husband is named Joe. It is a subtle moment, but suddenly the pieces fall into place—Joe is the assistant director, he has to come back to fill a role, and his family owns the cherry orchard that will become the farm on which our main characters have been toiling.
The story feels nostalgic, most likely because it is a story about telling stories from one’s past. I hope that one day I get to hear my parents’ life stories from their own mouths. I’m sure there is a lot I know already, but I’m also sure there is a lot that I have never heard.
There is also a pulsing reminder that the past cannot be changed. Emily, when she was younger, got the notion that Peter Duke was her father, not Joe, and that she belonged with him instead of with her “family”. Lara states that Emily was a very difficult child and teenager. But in hearing the story, she comes to terms with her family, her place in life; she realizes that things could have been different, but they are not.
Throughout the book there was very tangible familial love. There is something about working alongside people that brings you closer. It’s always nice to have a story in which the conflict is not about a family falling apart, but rather how a family comes together.
I think the only thing that took me out of the story was the subtle mention of the global pandemic. This book was published in 2023, so it was not entirely unexpected, but there was no place-setting done. There was only a quick mention of having to make facemasks; of people not being able to come over for a wedding; and then the pandemic was mentioned by name. Maybe it’s a good thing that it was a little jarring.
Overall, it was a fascinating read. Very slice-of-life but in a way that makes you feel a part of it. I’m excited to read more by Ann Patchett. She has a wonderful style and way of writing. It will be nice to see what else she can do.
Total pages read so far, 2024: 11,961
Total books read so far, 2024: 33
Next book: John Dies At the End by Jason Pargin