In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America’s finest writers. “Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature.” —The Guardian A Reese’s Book Club Pick 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.
In this beautiful and moving novel about family, love, and growing up, Ann Patchett once again proves herself one of America’s finest writers. “Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature.” —The Guardian A Reese’s Book Club Pick 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.
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Find Tom Lake Ann Patchett in PDF, EPUB, ebook, audiobook, print, or library editions.
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6 books in catalog
Acclaimed contemporary fiction and memoir often explore complex human relationships, family dynamics, and unexpected bonds, as demonstrated in the international bestseller Bel Canto. Ann Patchett has built a wide-ranging literary career featuring award-winning novels, personal essays, and memoirs that examine empathy, community, and domestic life. Her works, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Dutch House and the #1 New York Times bestseller Tom Lake, frequently highlight acts of kindness and the intricate connections between people navigating hardship and change.
Born in Los Angeles, California, Ann Patchett moved with her family to Nashville, Tennessee at age six. She attended Sarah Lawrence College and later earned her M.F.A. at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. In 1990, during a residential fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, she wrote her debut novel, The Patron Saint of Liars, which was named a New York Times Notable Book for 1992. She followed this success with her second novel, Taft (1994), which was awarded the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for fiction. Her breakthrough came with her fourth novel, Bel Canto (2001), which won both the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction while selling more than a million copies in the United States. Alongside her fiction, she published Truth & Beauty in 2004, a memoir chronicling her long friendship with author Lucy Grealy during Grealy's struggle with and death from cancer. Patchett served as the guest editor for Best American Short Stories 2006 and went on to author novels such as Run, State of Wonder, Commonwealth, The Dutch House, Tom Lake, and Whistler. In addition to her writing, she is an independent bookstore owner in Nashville and was awarded the National Humanities Medal.
Patchett's narrative approach centers on deep character development, interpersonal warmth, and the emotional complexities of human nature. Her fiction often brings disparate groups of people together in confined or unusual settings, testing their resilience and capacity for empathy. Rather than focusing on cynicism, her storytelling emphasizes kindness, moral choices, and the subtle ways individuals form unexpected communities. In her memoirs and personal essays, including Truth & Beauty, she reflects candidly on friendship, mortality, artistic devotion, and the craft of writing. Her expansive fiction and reflective prose offer readers intimate examinations of family secrets, memory, and the enduring power of human connection.
6 books in catalog
Acclaimed contemporary fiction and memoir often explore complex human relationships, family dynamics, and unexpected bonds, as demonstrated in the international bestseller Bel Canto. Ann Patchett has built a wide-ranging literary career featuring award-winning novels, personal essays, and memoirs that examine empathy, community, and domestic life. Her works, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Dutch House and the #1 New York Times bestseller Tom Lake, frequently highlight acts of kindness and the intricate connections between people navigating hardship and change.
Born in Los Angeles, California, Ann Patchett moved with her family to Nashville, Tennessee at age six. She attended Sarah Lawrence College and later earned her M.F.A. at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. In 1990, during a residential fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, she wrote her debut novel, The Patron Saint of Liars, which was named a New York Times Notable Book for 1992. She followed this success with her second novel, Taft (1994), which was awarded the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for fiction. Her breakthrough came with her fourth novel, Bel Canto (2001), which won both the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction while selling more than a million copies in the United States. Alongside her fiction, she published Truth & Beauty in 2004, a memoir chronicling her long friendship with author Lucy Grealy during Grealy's struggle with and death from cancer. Patchett served as the guest editor for Best American Short Stories 2006 and went on to author novels such as Run, State of Wonder, Commonwealth, The Dutch House, Tom Lake, and Whistler. In addition to her writing, she is an independent bookstore owner in Nashville and was awarded the National Humanities Medal.
Patchett's narrative approach centers on deep character development, interpersonal warmth, and the emotional complexities of human nature. Her fiction often brings disparate groups of people together in confined or unusual settings, testing their resilience and capacity for empathy. Rather than focusing on cynicism, her storytelling emphasizes kindness, moral choices, and the subtle ways individuals form unexpected communities. In her memoirs and personal essays, including Truth & Beauty, she reflects candidly on friendship, mortality, artistic devotion, and the craft of writing. Her expansive fiction and reflective prose offer readers intimate examinations of family secrets, memory, and the enduring power of human connection.
