“Tom Lake” by Ann Patchett

I just finished reading Ann Patchett's pandemic project, which causes my own (paint-by-number) to pale in comparison. (Actually I'm not sure that Patchett really wrote this book during lockdown, but it was partially set then.) 

First, I just want to ask: How in the world did Ann Patchett publish a new book and I had no idea it was coming? I didn't even hear a peep about it before I saw it on the shelf at Target two weeks ago. I must be reading the wrong news. Although I did feel a bit better when I saw it was only released on August 1st, so it's not as if it's been out there for months. 

I'll tell you a secret, though. I didn't buy it when I saw it at Target. You know why? I don't like the dust jacket. It looks so shiny and cheap! I thought surely it was just the shiny cheap Target version and figured I would find a nicer one to buy online. But nope, this is it. Shiny and cheap. But you know what they say about books and their covers, and that's, like, a thousand percent true here.

Because this book is super awesome. I enjoyed reading it so, so much. It tells the story of Lara (formerly Laura) Kenison, one-time ingenue who starred in a famous movie but ended up finding her happiness and her life on a cherry farm in Michigan. During the summer of 2020, when all three of her twenty-something daughters have come home to weather out the pandemic and help with the harvest, Lara finds herself telling them of that long-ago summer at Tom Lake when she played Emily in a summer stock production of Our Town. And whereas the story of that summer alone could have been a novel, here is where Ann Patchett reveals her genius: what might have been melodramatic or cloying if told on its own becomes so much more when viewed through the hazy lens of time and nostalgia. It's a gripping story, and as I read I almost felt like I was Lara's fourth daughter. I was definitely absorbed by this book, which Sam can attest to after seeing me wander around the house with it glued to my face. 

SO here's something really weird. You know that I tend to read every single word in a book--especially books I really like--from the Advance Praise to the author's bio. So of course I noticed that Patchett's author photo in this book appears to have been taken in her bookstore, as do some of her previous author photos, but in this one I can see several stacks of multiple copies of the same book (not uncommon with new bestsellers in bookstores). One of these looked so familiar to me--cream colored book, dark frame on the spine--so much so that I thought for sure I owned a copy of it. I literally scanned all my bookshelves looking for it, only to discover that no, I do not have a copy of this book, although Wicked and The Mysterious Benedict Society are probably the reasons I found it familiar-seeming. I figured that I needed to make like Elsa and let it go. BUT as I was scanning the interwebs just now to make SURE there isn't a less shiny and more luxurious-looking version of Tom Lake, I FIGURED IT OUT. It's Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (which I don't have a copy of, but probably should). It's weird to me that that book just popped up in relation to Tom Lake. I wonder if there are other weirdos like me who had to know what book that was. And now they're inextricably linked. Or maybe it was just the Pulitzer thing.

The staycation continues! Well, for a few more hours, anyway . . .