Author: Ann Patchett
Publisher: Harper
Genre: Fiction
Source: Kritters Ramblings

Goodreads:

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 called 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.

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.

Ope’s Opinion: I read Ann Patchett one other time and found it very hard to read. This time my daughter suggested the book, so I decided to try her again. This book was easier to read. I did find it to move a bit too slow for me.

Moving back and forth from past to present was not marked as well I would have liked. Some times I did have to go back to figure out if she was reminiscing or if she was talking to her daughters in the present time.

I think this is a reminder to children that their parents were once young and had a life before they came along. It also showed how one decision, effects the next decision, which effects your life and those around you.

It was an interesting read that made think for a bit, but not one that will stick with me for a long time.