From the Bookshelf of Constant Reader…

Tom Lake

Ann Patchett

Start date: April 15, 2024

Finish date: May 15, 2024

Discussion: Reading List

Discussion leader: Barb

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Reading List

* The Schedule for July through Dec. 2025
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What Members Thought

Sep 29, 2023 Barbara rated it it was amazing

Shelves: audiobook

This was an audiobook production and Meryl Streep was the reader. The book was very good but Streep made it excellent. I was able to get it through Libby at my library.

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Dec 21, 2023 Jane rated it really liked it

Shelves: family-story, womans-story, geographical, psychology, coming-of-age-novel, marriage, friendship, natural-world, mothering

I love Ann Patchett's novels. While this was no exception, there were times when I was confused by the enormous cast of characters. It was hard to keep them straight, although I gradually became familiar with the most important characters. It took effort an some lists. The book also goes back and forth in time. For me, that made unnecessary complications.

On the other hand, the themes of Our Town are woven together beautifully with the story of Lara, her husband and her children. I remember seei I love Ann Patchett's novels. While this was no exception, there were times when I was confused by the enormous cast of characters. It was hard to keep them straight, although I gradually became familiar with the most important characters. It took effort an some lists. The book also goes back and forth in time. For me, that made unnecessary complications.

On the other hand, the themes of Our Town are woven together beautifully with the story of Lara, her husband and her children. I remember seeing this play performed by students in the Upper School where I taught for forty years. The play becomes the main character's life in the early part of the book. I marked numerous passages that were so beautifully written. Patchett knows how to get to the heart of love, family, grief, longing. And this skill kept me reading no matter how much effort it took for me to move between time periods or to keep characters straight.

One of y favorite passages occurs after Lara has broken her leg and her understudy, Pallace takes on the role of Emily in Our Town. "Emily isn't black," I heard the woman in front of me say...where was the slip of paper that had fallen out of programs? What had it said.
All those hours she had endured me day after day as she watched from the back of the theater, all those lines she wanted to speak for herself.
You don't see the play when you're in it and she missed the chatter of intermission entirely. Our Town has an intermission after each of the first two acts, and the second one felt like a break in a political rally or a tent revival. The disbelievers were starting to lean forward. They were listening. The message had made no sense at first but this Emily was eroding their notion of what was correct. Her wedding day was played not for eroticism but for fear. She didn't want to leave home, , keep house, make meals, endure childbirth, because childbirth would kill her. She wanted to be her father's girl, his birthday girl. Growing up was a terrible thing--a clear path to the third act. Emily showed us that, all those moments in life we had missed and would never get backagain.
The remaining few who'd managed to hold on to their belief that Emily could not be black were destroyed by the third act. We all were. When she went back to her mother's kitchen, I cried because she was that good. I cried because I would never play Emily again. I cried because I had loved that world so much." ...more

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Sep 09, 2023 Linda Aull rated it it was amazing

I usually don’t include audio books here but this is a notable exception. Read by none other than Meryl Streep, the story springs to life through her subtle characterizations. She reads very slowly; even so, I dropped from my usual 1.7x to 1x just to enjoy her wonderful performance.

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Feb 01, 2024 Jessica rated it it was amazing

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO!! It’s the incomparable Meryl-Freaking-Streep and she is FABULOUS just as expected. Gosh I love her. It’s hard to know if I would have loved this book as much with a different narrator or reading it to myself but with Meryl, it felt like HER story she was sharing. It felt so natural and so realistic. Every. Single. Character. I loved them. Lara and Joe. All the girls. Sebastian! Even though we were supposed to be smitten with Duke. Even the uncle and Massey. Beautiful charact ...more

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Apr 17, 2024 Mary Ellen rated it really liked it

I thoroughly enjoyed this story, and story-within-the-story. Lara Nelson is guiltily enjoying the pandemic which has brought her three (not-too-) adult daughters back to the family farm. As she and her daughters spend their days harvesting cherries, Lara tells them the story of her brief acting career, which included a summer stock stint at Tom Lake. Beautifully written, it is also an easy read.

Tom Lake does not make it to five stars because it is almost too easy a read. The difficulties in Lar ...more

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Jan 11, 2024 Dora rated it it was amazing

Shelves: own-need-to-review

It’s a beautiful book that uses the early part of the pandemic to create space for the narrator to tell her story to her daughters, her husband, and the reader.

There are enough twists and turns and surprises to keep the reader’s interest and to keep it from being just nice.

Toward the end, I was sure there couldn’t be more and that Patchett had missed the perfect point to end the story, but… no. There was more story to be told.

Excellent book, highly recommend. And now I feel like I need to read ...more

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