Tom Lake Book Review: A Story of Love and Memory

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This is the book I chose to take with me on a long flight. I’ve never read Ann Patchett before, and so it was a bit of a risk. But, I made the right choice. Such a warm and comforting read! It’s one of those books that I could take breaks, nap a little, and come back to it without missing a beat. So, not heavily plot-driven.

About Tom Lake

In the spring of 2020, Lara’s three daughters return to the family’s orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company at Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

~ Synopsis from GoodReads

My Review

This is a very simple book, but still, there’s so much to unpack in it. I loved the relationship between the narrator and her daughters. There was such a Little Women feel to it. But I also adored how she slowly moved from a mother figure to a complex woman to her grown daughters. This is a book with a lot of emotional depth.

The book is an ode to a simple life, the joys of family. I loved how she showed that genuine love is often quieter and less flashy than the love we see in movies and other media. That a quiet life is often more fulfilling than one that’s showy and exciting. But also it’s impossible to tell someone that. They have to figure it out themselves. Throughout the book her youngest daughter, Nell, finds it hard to understand why her mother would give up a life of showbiz to become a country wife managing a cherry orchard with her husband. To be fair, I also wondered that. Being a farmer’s wife is a hard job, but the more I read, the more I understood why Lara would choose this life over movies.

There’s a lot more, too, but I think it’s a book where the plot is not quite as important as the thoughts, feelings, and nuances expressed.

I do think that I would have enjoyed the book more if I had read the play Our Town by Thornton Wilder or even visited Northern Michigan. Still, it was a great read, and one of those books I’d love to reread sitting in the garden during the fall.