Ann Patchett is probably one of the best women's fiction writers out there. I usually don't read romance novels, but a Patchett novel is always a lot more than just the romance. This story centres around a mother and her three grown daughters. They, along with the father, live on a Michigan cherry orchard. The book is built around the mother talking about her early life to her three girls. As she recounts her story, the present-day life revolves around the past story in a seamless way. The book is set in the spring of 2020, and the pandemic is running rampant around the world. The story unfolds as the mother and daughters are picking cherries in the orchard. As Lara recounts her past as a young woman in the theatre and movie world. The past history is mostly about Tom Lake, which is a northern Michigan lake where Lara was performing summer stock theatre. Ann Patchett's no-holds barred look at family dynamics and family evolution through the years is the strong glue that holds this book together and allows seamless transitions from past to present. I must read more Ann Patchett books. I really enjoy her straightforward narrative style. The fact that the book was narrated by Meryl Streep made it extra special. ( )

I'm an Ann Patchett fan. I live in Ann Arbor, and have visited the Traverse City area twice. It's beautiful, even when the cherry trees are not blossoming. I can totally understand why this book is placed in this area. People flock there, especially in the summer. Many pass on visiting in the winter, too close to the winds of Lake Michigan. And with all those people needing something to do in the evening, there's summer stock. Classical music fans even have Interlochen, think between the lakes, nearby. And when the weather isn't cooperating, there's always antique hunting. That's the backdrop for Tom Lake. The perfect mixture of fruit trees, lakes and summer stock. What Ann Patchett adds is a perfect ear for family dynamics.

The narrator is a mother relating to her three, grown or still growing, daughters, her story. They want to know why their beautiful mother, who starred in a movie, who had one of the most famous movie stars as a boyfriend, turned away from it all and chose an orchard in Michigan. The daughters have their own lives, one wants the orchard forever, one wants to be a vet, and one wants to be an actress. They all pitch in on the farm. It takes their all and then some. When the crop is great, the processors lower their prices, and when the crop fails, the prices go up. Not a pretty part of the picture. It builds the notion that the farm is not a given. It will disappear if they don't give it their all. She has bought in. In some sense, the daughters want to know why. Why didn't she take the other fork in the road. Not at all clear why this story is not already well known. In some sense, they want to hear it one more time, in another sense, she adds details as the daughters get old enough. Some details are even too intimate to share with the daughters or even the husband, we they readers get to hear the most juicy bits.

While the place, the orchard, and the people, the family, are very important, this story has one other element which dominants the narrative, the play. Thornton's Wilder's classic Our Town is laced throughout this book. It is the ultimate summer stock offering. And for me, and I'm sure many other readers, every time the Stage Manager role is mentioned, and it is often mentioned, I picture Paul Newman's 2003 revival on PBS and Broadway. Central to this story is the mother being the perfect Emily. She was and is beautiful. She was a natural. Indeed, that was her strength, she wasn't acting, and that showed.

While her daughters were long aware that her boyfriend that summer was Peter Duke, who played George in their production of Our Town. Duke went on to become a world famous actor, starring in many films, all of which they had seen and memorized most of his heartrending lines. The oldest daughter was even convinced that Duke was her real father. They also knew that their mother went on to a starring role in a film. In the book, they even enjoy a showing of one of Duke's most famous films on a "screen" stretched between trees on a neighbor's farm near the lake. It turns out that she and Duke parted ways soon after that idyllic summer, and with time, she eventually crossed paths with the man who had directed them in that production. He admits he was always in love with her but stood aside while she was with Duke. Now in adulthood, he becomes her husband and the father of the girls. It was his family's orchard, which has now become theirs. Patchett weaves all these and many more details into a fascinating tale. I recommend it highly. ( )

I was really caught up in this story; I found myself thinking about it constantly whenever I was away from it. The backstory, that is, with the young Lara. The realtime story about the older Lara with the three daughters was OK for framing, but otherwise a bit of an annoying interruption. Also, I admit I have Issues and hate reading about happy families, lovey-dovey sister relationships, mother-daughter relationships - I know this and I cut the book a lot of slack, but the Nelson family was just so smarmily perfectly loving. The word "smothering" came to mind towards the end. She didn't need to draw them that way to get the contrast across.

Back to the positives. I loved the young Lara. I loved her independence and quick straightforward snappy approach to everything. Ann Pratchett is really wonderful. The setup got me hooked. I loved high school Lara and her friend Veronica. She knows how to make characters likeable but not too cardboard cut-out. I loved that Lara was obviously smart and liked books but wasn't totally precocious nor a stereotypical bookish nerd. I liked that Lara was kind of naive but not totally stupid about the adult world.

I'm saying nothing about the plot. You can get a plot summary anywhere.

A couple of things about the ending could have been better but it's not worth spoiling anything. ( )

Tom Lake was a braided story (then and now) of a mother relating her glamorous past life as an actor to her clamoring daughters. Having a story run in two parts can be frustrating to the eager reader. It is like looking for the sexy parts or the who done it section. In this story, you're curious as to what happened to him, to them, and how she ended up with a cherry farmer. The characters are all beautiful, compatible and sympathetic; the dogs are sweet; the cherries are relentless in their need for harvest. The story has good forward motion. But I wanted a bit more of an edge. I wanted to have at least one character who does not defies the odds and I guess that was "the golden boy, Duke." But there is a lot of happy family story before Duke's failings become evident, and I would have liked more reflection from the once-smitten mother to hold my interest. It's still Ann Patchett and that's worth a lot, but not my favorite of her titles. Take me back to Bel Canto. ( )

Roman over drie dochters die terugkeren naar het ouderlijk huis in het noorden van Michigan. Hun moeder vertelt over een kortstondige romance uit haar verleden. Dit dwingt de dochters om hun mening over haar en over zichzelf in een ander licht te zien ( )