From the acclaimed author of The Dutch House and Bel Canto comes a characteristically nuanced and emotionally intelligent novel of family, storytelling and the lives mothers lived before the births of their children.
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.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
ISBN: 9781526664273
Number of pages: 320
Dimensions: 234 x 153 mm
A bittersweet tale of family, heartbreak and hope ... Those who want fiction to soothe, bolster and cheer will love it - Guardian
A beautiful, stirring book that sneaks up on you and makes a deep impression ... The moment I finished it, I wanted to go back and start again - Sunday Times
Few authors can dig into the minutiae of human emotion quite like the Women’s Prize-winning author, and Tom Lake is one of her best ... Flitting between past and present, the novel spools out like a film, and ponders timeless questions about love, family and destiny - i
Thoughtful and elegiac in its descriptions of first love and motherhood ... Patchett celebrates not just the smallest events of our lives, but 'small' lives themselves - Financial Times
Patchett is always great on family dysfunction, and these scenes prickle to life - The Times
A twinned narrative of a past young love, present day nostalgia and the complex, intertwined connections between mothers and daughters ... Enchanting and bittersweet, it is another tour de force from Patchett - Harper's Bazaar
A deeply American story of love, heartbreak and wistful old age ... We’re in nostalgic summer romance territory, and Tom Lake delivers the expected emotional pay-off - Telegraph
Completely absorbing - Grazia
Elegant, gloriously immersive, beautifully imagined, funny and tender, this is an elegy to family love, even when the world is in a state of crisis and uncertainty. Ann Patchett leads us with the intelligence, detail, wit and nuance of the greatest chroniclers of human nature and relationships. Nothing escapes her - Rachel Joyce
Filled with the moments I live for in a story – careful, compelling insights into human nature, the most effortless humour, and the kind of vivid descriptions that reveal exactly how something is - Bonnie Garmus, bestselling author of LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY
One of our greatest living chroniclers of love and marriage – and its resounding impacts over generations – is back this summer ... Expect wonder; Patchett always delivers - Elle
Patchett’s intricate and subtle thematic web ... enfolds the nature of storytelling, the evolving dynamics of a family, and the complex interaction between destiny and choice ... These braided strands culminate in a denouement at once deeply sad and tenderly life-affirming. Poignant and reflective, cementing Patchett’s stature as one of our finest novelists - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Masterly ... A love letter to both storytelling itself and the bonds that tie family and friends together, Patchett has once again worked her unique brand of magic with this gentle, tender story that glows with heart and humanity - Bookseller, Book of the Month
Few authors can match Patchett in her skill for creating quietly profound novels that stay with readers long after the final page - Good Housekeeping, Book of the Year Pick
Dazzling … Secrets are withheld in a story that offers small plot twists and reveals that pack the power of a defibrillator shock. The characters are varied and astutely drawn and the way Patchett – who has been writing great fiction for decades – handles Lara’s inner life is sublime - Independent, Book of the Year Pick
First of all, I have to be honest that I’m biased writing a review of an Ann Patchett novel. Her gentle deep exploration of human kindness and complexities mixed with her skilful storytelling always creates... More
As absorbing and engaging story. The family are reunited to work together on their farm as the covid restrictions leave them without support to harvest their cherry crop. To pass the time their mother recounts her... More
Tom Lake
by Ann Patchett
This is the book that made me do the happy dance when I received it because there's something about reading Ann Patchett that makes me glow. I have no words to describe her writing...
More
Please sign in to write a review
Would you like to proceed to the App store to download the Waterstones App?