Author | Ann Patchett |
---|---|
Audio read by | Meryl Streep |
Language | English |
Publisher | Harper |
Publication date | August 1, 2023 |
Publication place | United States |
Media type | Print (hardcover), e-book, audiobook |
Pages | 320 |
ISBN | 978-0-06-332752-8 |
Tom Lake is a 2023 novel by Ann Patchett. It was published by Harper on August 1, 2023. [1] The book relates the story of three daughters who yearn to know about their mother's youthful relationship with a famous actor. Upon its release, the book was met with mostly positive reviews from book critics, who praised it as the author's prime material.
Three daughters, Emily, Maisie, and Nell, return to their family's Northern Michigan cherry orchard in the spring of 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, learn about their mother's relationship with famous actor Peter Duke, with whom she shared the stage in Our Town at a theatre company named Tom Lake in the 1980s.
The novel debuted at number one on The New York Times fiction best-seller list for the week ending August 5, 2023. [2] According to Publishers Weekly , the novel sold more than 38,000 copies in its first week. [3]
On the review aggregator website Book Marks, which assigns individual ratings to book reviews from mainstream literary critics, the novel received a cumulative "rave" rating based on 24 reviews: 19 "rave" reviews, four "positive" reviews, and one "mixed" review. [4]
Kirkus Reviews gave the novel a starred review, writing, "These braided strands culminate in a denouement at once deeply sad and tenderly life-affirming. Poignant and reflective, cementing Patchett's stature as one of our finest novelists." [5] The novel was also well received at Publishers Weekly, which noted in its review, "As Patchett's slow-burn narrative gathers dramatic steam, she blends past and present with dexterity and aplomb, as the daughters come to learn more of the truth about Lara's Duke stories, causing them to reshape their understanding of their mother. Patchett is at the top of her game." [6]
Benjamin Markovits of The Daily Telegraph gave the novel 4 out of 5 stars, comparing its qualities to Thornton Wilder's play Our Town , which features in Patchett's novel. [7] Grace Linden of the Los Angeles Review of Books agreed, writing, "Our Town, a play about loss and the inability to appreciate life as it happens, is the perfect foil for Patchett's story." [8]
Katy Waldman of The New Yorker wrote, "The ingredients have been assembled for a wistful meditation on mothers and daughters learning to handle the seasons of their lives [...] But the novel's alchemical transformation of pain into peace feels, at times, overstated [...] As Tom Lake goes on, the determined positivity begins to feel slightly menacing, or at least constrictive." [9] Alice O'Keefe of The Times echoed the latter criticism, writing that the novel "seems to almost wilfully ignore the darker side of life. You'll happily while away an afternoon with it, if you like your fiction as sticky-sweet as cherry pie." [10]
Laura Lippman is an American journalist and author of over 20 detective fiction novels. Her novels have won multiple awards, including an Agatha Award, seven Anthony Awards, two Barry Awards, an Edgar Award, a Gumshoe Award, a Macavity Award, a Nero Award, two Shamus Awards, and two Strand Critics Award.
Ann Patchett is an American author. She received the 2002 PEN/Faulkner Award and the Orange Prize for Fiction in the same year, for her novel Bel Canto. Patchett's other novels include The Patron Saint of Liars (1992), Taft (1994), The Magician's Assistant (1997), Run (2007), State of Wonder (2011), Commonwealth (2016), The Dutch House (2019), and Tom Lake (2023). The Dutch House was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Run is a 2007 novel by American author Ann Patchett. It was her first novel after the widely successful Bel Canto (2001).
Eugenia Kim is a Korean American writer and novelist who lives in Washington, DC. She is most known for her novel, The Calligrapher's Daughter, which was critically acclaimed and won multiple awards, including a 2009 Borders Original Voices Award for Fiction. Kim teaches at Fairfield University's MFA Creative Writing program.
So Long, See You Tomorrow is a novel by American author William Maxwell. It was first published in The New Yorker magazine in October 1979 in two parts. It was published as a book the following year by Alfred A. Knopf.
Commonwealth is the seventh novel by American author Ann Patchett, published in 2016. The novel begins with an illicit kiss that leads to an affair that destroys two marriages and creates a reluctantly blended family. In a series of vignettes spanning fifty years, it tells the story of the six children whose lives were disrupted and how they intertwined.
Ellen J. Levy is an American writer and academic who was an associate professor of English at Colorado State University before retiring from this role. Her collection of short stories, Love, In Theory, was published in 2012, and her first novel, The Cape Doctor, in 2021 to positive reviews.
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous is the debut novel by Vietnamese American poet Ocean Vuong, published by Penguin Press on June 4, 2019. An epistolary novel, it is written in the form of a letter from a Vietnamese American son to his illiterate mother. It was a finalist for the 2020 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and was longlisted for the 2019 National Book Award for Fiction.
Ducks, Newburyport is a 2019 novel by British author Lucy Ellmann. The novel is written in the stream of consciousness narrative style, and consists of a single long sentence, with brief clauses that start with the phrase "the fact that" more than 19,000 times. The book runs over 1000 pages. It won the 2019 Goldsmiths Prize and was shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize.
The Dutch House is a 2019 novel by Ann Patchett. It was published by Harper on September 24, 2019. It tells the story of a brother and sister, Danny and Maeve Conroy, who grow up in a mansion known as the Dutch House, and their lives over five decades.
Akil Kumarasamy is an American author and an assistant professor in the Masters of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing at Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences-Newark. Her collection of short stories Half Gods won The Story Prize Spotlight Award and the 2021–2022 Annual Bard Fiction Prize. Her novel Meet Us by the Roaring Sea was released in August 2022.
Harlem Shuffle is a 2021 novel by American novelist Colson Whitehead. It is the follow-up to Whitehead's 2019 novel The Nickel Boys, which earned him his second Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It is a work of crime fiction and a family saga that takes place in Harlem between 1959 and 1964. It was published by Doubleday on September 14, 2021.
The Lying Life of Adults is a 2019 novel by Elena Ferrante. It was adapted into a television series of the same name by Edoardo De Angelis in 2023.
These Precious Days is a 2021 essay collection by American writer Ann Patchett. It received “rave” reviews and became a New York Times best seller.
Harrow is a science-fiction fantasy novel by Joy Williams, published September 14, 2021 by Knopf Publishing Group.
The Candy House is a novel by Jennifer Egan, published by Scribner's with a U.S. release date of April 5, 2022.
The Rabbit Hutch is a 2022 debut novel by writer Tess Gunty and winner of the 2022 National Book Award for Fiction. Gunty won the inaugural Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize and the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize for the novel.
I Have Some Questions for You is a literary mystery novel by Rebecca Makkai. The novel received positive critical reception upon release, and spent six weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
If I Survive You is the debut book by Jonathan Escoffery, published on September 6, 2022 by MCD Books. It is a collection of eight interlinked short stories that follow the struggles of an immigrant family from Jamaica who build a new home in Miami. The story's main character is Trelawny, an American-born son of immigrants who grapples with identity, familial and cultural issues through various phases of adolescence and adulthood.
Traps is a 2013 neo-noir novel by MacKenzie Scott. It follows the lives of four women in the southwestern U.S. whose lives intersect near Las Vegas. It was published by Knopf in 2013.