It feels a little strange to call an Ann Patchett novel a comfort read, but that's what this one felt like. Just a lovely book all around. ( )

While picking cherries on their Michigan cherry farm, Lara regales her three adult daughters with stories of the time she spent doing summer stock and dating an actor who went on to become a Hollywood star.

Patchett is a masterful storyteller. I loved all of the little twists and reveals over the course of the book, as well as the deep love for the play Our Town. Highly recommended. ( )

Tom Lake - Patchett
Audio performance by M. Streep (give her another Oscar)
5 stars

“There is no explaining this simple truth about life: you will forget much of it.”

The Dutch House replaced Bel Canto as my favorite Ann Patchett novel. This book has replaced The Dutch House. The book grabbed me from the first pages as La(u)ra related her introduction to Our Town in high school. Full disclosure here; I have a daughter named Emily. She was a thespian in high school. She and a friend did a George and Emily dialog for a competition. This book was designed to hit my sweet spots.

On the other hand, I am probably ten years older than the Lara narrating this personal history, and I have no acting experience. I have one daughter, not three. That did not prevent me from falling into parental nostalgia along with Lara as she recalled her adult daughters as children. ( It also made me profoundly grateful that I will never have to raise another teenager.) This book is about recalling the past. It’s about laying the past to rest and being at peace with it.

Lara is entertaining her pandemically homebound adult daughters with stories of her youth. She has a good story to tell. Before she was a mommy, she was an actor. Before she married their daddy she had a boyfriend who became a famous actor. There are secrets. There’s trauma. There are decisions to make about what to tell and what not to tell.

Patchett kept this book in perfect balance. Part of the story is current day. Lara and Joe Nelson and their three daughters must manage the demands of the family fruit farm despite the restrictions of the pandemic. Lara dips into her past while the cherries are picked, the dinner is cooked and the mending is done. It provides some distraction from the dire news of the world while the young women adjust to having active lives placed on hold. The story of Lara’s past stopped and started with natural breaks for daily life. I liked this family. I wanted to visit this farm to help with the cherry picking.

I also wanted every detail of Lara’s life changing experience with summer stock at Tom Lake. I have no acting experience. I do have my own memories of young artists in intense summer performance venues. (My date was a musician.) I thought every detail of Patchetts’s Tom Lake summer stock was spot on. There’s an intensity to the production of live performance that Patchett captures perfectly. There’s just as much drama off stage and out of the orchestra pit as there is in the actual performance.
(More nostalgia, and more gratitude that I don’t ever have to be that young ever again. Also, I doubt that I could keep even one daughter interested in what I could remember.)

The premise of family history storytelling worked perfectly in this book. It flowed like a conversation. Meryl Streep was wonderful. Lara’s voice was old or young as it needed to be. Each daughter had a subtly different voice. I could listen to her forever. ( )

This was probably more of a 3.5 stars for me but I rounded it up to 4 because Ann Patchett is such a reliable author for me. I always enjoy her characters and the lovely flow of her stories. And it was a pleasant change to read a book that doesn't center around abused or oppressed characters. ( )

Ann Patchett is a goddamn national treasure. ( )