Vocal Book Club: Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

Tom Lake is not your ordinary pandemic novel, though it begins in that strange — and awful — spring of 2020. It is set in northern Michigan, on the cherry orchard belonging to the Nelson family. It interrogates the family’s life and the memories of Lara Nelson, once an actress, as she talks with her three grown daughters. They are Emily, who in time will settle on the farm; Maisie who’s at veterinary school; and Nell who hopes to follow in her mother’s thespian footsteps.

Being stalled by the virus allows time to delve into the past — most particularly to recover the story of Lara’s love affair with Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom Lara shared both a stage and a romance in the seemingly distant past. Although it’s told with Patchett’s seemingly artless clear narrative style, this is a novel rich in allusion and reference. When Lara and Peter were young, they starred in a revival of Thornton Wilder’s 1938 classic play Our Town, a still-resonant dramatization of life in a New Hampshire village. But Our Town itself is a play within a play, the action in the fictional town of Grover’s Corners, laid out for the audience by a Stage Manager who introduces all the characters. And it won’t be lost on many readers that there is also a famous play by Anton Chekhov called, of course, The Cherry Orchard, which addresses (to put it very bluntly and briefly) family life and political change.

Ann Patchett is a remarkable storyteller who in 2021 was awarded the National Medal for the Humanities; the citation from the White House praised her ‘for putting into words the beauty, pain, and complexity of human nature’ — something she’s done in novels like Bel Canto, Commonwealth and The Dutch House (I have a special soft spot for The Magician’s Assistant, I’ll reveal). And if you live in Nashville, Tennessee, you can also visit her bookstore, the wonderful Parnassus Books.

There is something wonderful in the deeply resonant ordinariness of the lives Patchett creates: everyone is special in Patchett’s world, just because they are so fully themselves. Reviewing the novel in the Guardian, the critic Rachel Cooke wrote that Patchett pulls off a ‘daring’ trick in Tom Lake: ‘Which is to take the temperature of a whole life, and by doing so, to prioritize happiness over misery, an emotion on which the novel often struggles to thrive.’

This book is one that made me reflect on my own life, my own choices in a way that was always open and never heavy-handed. Patchett’s characters are full of unforced wisdom and they always ask — lightly but thoughtfully — important questions. ‘There is no explaining this simple truth about life: you will forget much of it,’ Patchett writes as Lara considers what she had as a young woman and what she has now. ‘The painful things 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, until one morning you’re picking cherries with your three grown daughters and your husband goes by on the Gator and you are positive that this is all you’ve ever wanted in the world.’ What does it mean to find contentment? What does that mean for each of us? That’s what this lovely book asks us to consider.

See the Tom Lake discussion questions and our upcoming monthly Vocal Book Club picks below. Once you read the book, let us know your hot takes in the comments section! You can also check out last month's discussion of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow here.

Tom Lake Discussion Questions

Warning: if you haven’t read the book yet, you may find spoilers below in the questions.

What do you think about the way in which Patchett begins the novel, shifting the time of the narrative around page 10? We think we’re beginning one kind of story, and then we discover it’s another. How does that affect your interaction with the novel and its characters?

What do you think about the idea that it’s harder to write about happiness than it is to write about conflict or struggle? Can you think of other novels or films that address contentment?

Had you heard of the play Our Town? And if you hadn’t, did the novel make you curious to know more?

Lara ruptures her Achilles tendon and has to watch her friend play the starring role she’d rehearsed for. What role does loss play in this novel?

If you were going to recommend this book to a friend, what would you say about it?

Upcoming Vocal Book Club Picks

JANUARY: Trust by Hernan Diaz

FEBRUARY: Promise by Rachel Eliza Griffiths