Tom Lake, Ann Patchett
Tom Lake, Ann Patchett
12 Rating(s)
List: $27.99 | Sale: $19.59
Club: $13.99

Tom Lake
A Novel

Bestseller

Author: Ann Patchett

Narrator: Meryl Streep

Unabridged: 11 hr 22 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: HarperAudio

Published: 08/01/2023


Synopsis

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK • READ BY MERYL STREEP“Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature.”—The GuardianIn this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America’s finest writers.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.

About Ann Patchett

It seems that some people are just natural born authors. American author, Ann Patchett, is one of those people. She was born in Los Angeles, California in 1963 to a police captain and a nurse, who divorced when Ann was a young girl. Her mother remarried and moved the family to Nashville, Tennessee in 1969.

Ann attended St Bernard Academy school for girls in Nashville, then attended Sarah Lawrence College, followed by the Iowa Writer's Workshop at University of Iowa and Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts. It was Provincetown where she wrote her first novel, The Patron Saint of Liars, followed by Taft, The Magician's Assistant, Bel Canto, Run, State of Wonder, and Commonwealth. Three of her books are non-fiction......Truth and Beauty, What Now?, and This is the Story of a Happy Marriage. Her first children's book came in 2019, Lambslide, and was beautifully illustrated by Robin Preiss Glasser. Her books have been translated into more than 30 languages.

After winning numerous literary awards and being on bestseller lists, Ann co-founded her own bookstore, Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee with Karen Hayes. She currently lives in Nashville with her husband, Karl VanDevender, and their dog Sparky.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Yun on December 18, 2024

I hate to say it, but Tom Lake feels like a lot of nostalgic vibes and not much else. When I first dove in, I thought for sure this story would grab me. We're introduced to Lara right as she comes upon that prescient moment when she realizes she'd make a better Emily than all of the girls auditioning......more

Goodreads review by Fran on March 11, 2024

I know, I know. Everyone loves Ann Patchett, just as everyone in this novel loves Joe and Sebastian and Lara and Ken and Maisie and the farm. Also Joe and Lara's three daughters, and the dog, and the grandmother. Also cherry pie. But a pile of comfy pillows only makes a nice place to read a good nov......more

Goodreads review by emma on March 19, 2025

the best thing a book can be is: - about family - written by ann patchett [URL not allowed] the other best thing a book can be is: - among the absolute fraction of things i read that magically, miraculously, divinely qualifies as 5 stars. this is both. i had no idea it was the great......more

Goodreads review by Angela M on March 26, 2023

You might say this is Lara’s story of one summer in her early twenties when she played summer stock and was in love with an actor who later becomes a famous movie star. You might say it’s her three daughters’ stories who are home to help pick cherries on the family farm, since the workers can’t come......more

Goodreads review by Terrie on September 10, 2023

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett is a Woman's Story Within a Family Story! This is Lara's story of a summer long ago spent in summer stock theater at Tom Lake where, in her early twenties, she fell in love with an extremely handsome fellow actor named Peter Duke. It's also the story of Lara's family, her hus......more