Ann Patchett, much admired and loaded with prestigious awards in the US, likes to write about families and awkward domestic situations. Tom Lake revolves around something particularly awkward.
In an apparently idyllic spot in Michigan, Lara and her husband, Joe, run a large cherry orchard. When harvest time comes, they have to rely on their three adult daughters to help because no seasonal workers are available during the pandemic. Emily, Maisie and Nell are all in their twenties. They love watching films starring a Hollywood actor called Peter Duke. But one evening, Joe tells them the movie star once used to date their mother. Immediately, the three sisters want to hear the whole story of Lara’s affair with Duke, and keep nagging her to tell them every last detail.
And this is the dilemma presented in the novel. How much can parents tell their children – even adult children – about their lives before they were married and the children were born? Aren’t there memories of intimacy that are difficult to share? The novel is told in the first person by Lara, and Patchett is very skilled in suggesting that although Lara sometimes speaks frankly to her daughters, at other times she keeps memories to herself. They are either too painful or too embarrassing to reveal.
But this is only the half of it. Lara’s memories are as much concerned with the acting profession as they are with her youthful affair. She met Duke as a young woman when she scored a leading role in a summer stock production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. Everyone told her she was perfect for the role, including young Duke. She thought she was on the way to a career in the theatre. But when she was cast in a very different play, Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love, she found herself totally out of her depth. She was able to simply “be herself” in Our Town, but that was as far as her range went. Acting was not for her, and she chose a different, quieter way of life.
Tom Lake touches on the unavoidable narcissism of actors. It is also peppered with theatrical references. Note there are Three Sisters. Note they work in a Cherry Orchard. Chekhov is specifically referenced. So is King Lear with his troublesome three daughters. So are other canonical plays. More important than this, there is Lara coming to the adult understanding that she has her limits. Nostalgia may be fun, but it’s always an illusion.
There’s some improbability in the closing chapters. More difficult to accept is the way the three adult daughters gather dutifully around their mother, day by day, to hear each instalment of Lara’s earlier life. It’s a bit like a scene from a 19th-century novel. But then, isn’t half this novel about being performative, being theatrical, being at least one step away from everyday life? And although Lara controls the narrative, each of the three daughters is characterised in full, with her own interests, obsessions and troubles.
As the portrait of a level-headed but quizzical family, it’s very convincing.
Tom Lake, by Ann Patchett (Bloomsbury, $34.99)
