Tom Lake by Ann Pratchett.

Told between past and present Tom Lake is portraying young romance, big dreams but also steady love and the joy of family. Falling for the bigger than life young actor in your twenties then choosing a trustworthy mate that will be with you in good and in hard times.  Looking back with fondness at your youth and having no regret for the choices you made later on.

Synopsis

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.

Audiobook review

Narrator: Meryl Streep

“There is no explaining this simple truth about life: you will forget much of it. The painful things you were certain you’d never be able to let go? Now you’re not entirely sure when they happened, while the thrilling parts, the heart-stopping joys, splintered and scattered and became something else. Memories are then replaced by different joys and larger sorrows, and unbelievably, those things get knocked aside as well.”

5 stars

This will be a hard review to write because the synopsis is so beautifully written that I know my words will feel inadequate.

I’ll do my best to convey the feelings I experienced while listening to that book.

Maybe I could begin by telling you that it was a pure delight listening to Meryl Streep. She had that steady grace, that tranquil but assured cadence that simply was perfect for that kind of story.

So if you like audiobooks, go for it.

Astonishingly, it took me some time to fall into that story. Probably because it began right away with Lara’s memories of her auditioning to play Emily while in high school and I needed some time to realize she was narrating her life to her three daughters as a mean to pass the time while they were locked on their farm because of the pandemic.

Once I was in though, I just wanted to keep listening to that story.

What Tom Lake made me feel is nostalgic.

Even if it was not my life that was narrated, it’s written in such a compelling way that you can’t help but walk into Lara’s shoes. Her story, past and present, becomes your story. You ARE Lara. And you are retelling your past for your children’s to hear.

Every moment of Lara’s life, her career as an actress, her summer romance with Peter Duke who will later become a famous actor, every joy, every betrayal  and her life after that summer was so vividly depicted that I had no difficulty seeing it all playing in my mind.

The story as also made me sad.

Not only because of what happened to some of the characters but also because the climate change, broached in that book, with all its uncertainties had young people not wanting to have children. This is not a major part or plot into the story but as my own kids feel the same, it fed my angst about our future and what we are doing to this world for future generations.

Tom Lake had also me wishing I could go live on a cherry tree farm in Northern Michigan.

The peace and beauty of that land, the tranquility of the family graveyard, the changing seasons painted a luminous tapestry in my mind and I just wanted to go buy my own farm, hard labor and long days be damned.

The synopsis states that it’s told with “profound intelligence and emotional subtlety”, and it couldn’t be more accurate.

Told between past and present Tom Lake is portraying young romance, big dreams but also steady love and the joy of family. Falling for the bigger than life young actor in your twenties then choosing a trustworthy mate that will be with you in good and in hard times.  Looking back with fondness at your youth and having no regret for the choices you made later on.

This is a beautiful story that will sweep you off your feet and transport you to Northern Michigan for a few days.

Maybe one last word: strangely this book reminded me of Mary Jane by Jessica Anya Blau. I can’t explain because these books have nothing in common story wise but they both gave me that luminous and nostalgic feeling.

Thanks for reading.

Sophie