"Tom Lake" by Ann Patchett
A woman tells her three adult daughters the story of the summer she dated a future movie star.
Ann Patchett is a very good writer, and it’s only been in the last couple years that I’ve discovered how good she is. The Dutch House was a terrific book (a finalist for the Pulitzer, losing to Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys). Her essay in Harper’s Magazine about how she quarantined with Tom Hanks’s assistant during chemotherapy and the pandemic was just lovely. I really liked her tough-to-find memoir on how to become a writer titled The Getaway Car. And – this clinches my Patchett fandom – she owns an indie bookstore in Nashville. So picking up her latest novel Tom Lake was an easy choice. And again, proof that she’s a great writer.
There are two stories going on in Tom Lake. One is the story of Lara, a girl from New Hampshire who’s had some luck acting in LA, and spends a season as a summer stock actor in a remote Michigan theater company at Tom Lake. It’s the story of her summer love affair with a fellow actor named Peter Duke years before he becomes a household name and international celebrity. The second story is middle-aged Lara telling her three adult daughters the story of that summer. The parallel narratives allow for some fun and unexpected connections as the story unfolds. A lesser writer might have just told the story of summer at Tom Lake, but Patchett weaves the two storylines together beautifully.
The non-character character of the book is Thorton Wilder’s Pulitzer-prize winning, 1938 play Our Town. Lara begins her acting career starring as Emily, and it’s the role that brings her to Tom Lake. I’d never seen Our Town, and after Tom Lake I finally decided to look into it. There’s a 1940 film available on Amazon, but the 1989 PBS performance with Spaulding Gray as the Stage Manager is often cited as the best one. It is, and it is a stunning work of art. You should definitely watch it. Knowledge of Our Town isn’t a prerequisite for reading or enjoying Tom Lake, but now having watched the play, it’s interesting to spot some of the connections I’d missed. (Those literary homages make Tom Lake a nice chaser to Demon Copperhead.)
READ IT IF: You love well-written novels with good characters. Also, you should watch Our Town. It’s wonderful.
The opening four minutes of the 1988 production of Our Town with Spaulding Gray. But you should carve out an hour and forty-five minutes and watch the whole thing.