Books: “Tom Lake” by Ann Patchett
Each day of our lives, we make choices, some fairly significant. If we choose Door Number 1, we wonder what would’ve happened if we’d chosen Door Number 2. And vice versa.
In “Tom Lake,” Ann Patchett’s new novel set during the height of the pandemic, Lara Nelson, a former actress and now a cherry farmer’s wife, relates her own life story and life choices to her grownup daughters. Lara, we learn through flashbacks, performed in a college production of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town” in the late 1980s. Her performance as Emily was so remarkable, a visiting film producer whisked her off to Hollywood and put her in a big-budget movie. The stuff dreams are made of.
While waiting for the film to be finished in post, Lara takes off to do summer stock in a remote area of Michigan called Tom Lake. There she is swept off her feet by Duke, a handsome bad-boy actor. They, along with Duke’s equally hunky brother Sebastian and her understudy Pallace, enter into a round-robin relationship that will eventually lead to some wildly different life choices.
The star-crossed romance of Lara and Duke is what drives “Tom Lake,” a current fiction best-seller. While the story is romantic, the prose is never overwrought—with a story this compelling, there’s no need for fluff.
A propos of nothing, “Tom Lake” is also a Reese Book’s Club selection—and I suppose Ms. Witherspoon should know something about making choices. Her breakthrough movie was “Election” with Matthew Broderick.
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