When a writer like Ann Patchett is creating her characters, we give her some leeway…she is writing from her own amazing brain that teems with creative ideas. And she has a history of successful novels behind her. Thus, a young female character named Emily, in Patchett’s recent novel, TOM LAKE, might respond to her sister, Maisie, while the two are picking cherries (the family business): “I’m starting to understand something here. Everything leads to the next thing.” And of course Maisie responds: “That’s called narrative. I guess they don’t teach you that in hort school.”
Nice retort in this conversation. But Reader, to help you out, hort stands for horticulture. Because when each member of a family is part of the family business, picking cherries in the state of Michigan, someone has to know something about cherries! But in life and in fiction, we also need to understand the choices people make, the hurts and pains that often follow those choices. Not to mention sexual relationships that can just happen, the hurts and sorrows that occur, and that the two people involved might never consider how one coupling can change a life. And yes, this the subtle message in many of the incidents strung together to create TOM LAKE.
Someone has to know something about love, about life. Someone has to be the grown-up here. Hopefully it is the main character, Lara Kenison, who after a brief carrier as an actress in a major Hollywood film, now lives with her husband Joe, and their three daughters, in a cherry orchard in Michigan. (Patchett does her homework, providing us with necessary vocabulary for this occupation, like lugs, which weight 25 pounds and can yield 8-12 quarts of cherries.) But now on with the story…
LOVE, HISTORY, FAMILY What else is there?
We read about a family of not a few complicated relationships, which is normal! But this is also a family of successful decisions, with love and heartache thrown in along the way. And as in normal families, some of it is outwardly realized, and some of it hidden. This is a novel that twists and turns, embedding the story of the main character Lara Kenison, who loved acting in her high school presentation of Thornton Wilder’s OUR TOWN, and who later actually acted in a film with a major film star before leaving the theatre to raise her children and pick cherries.
WHY? Patchett slowly and in language that only she can create…reveals all the sadness and joys in Lara’s life that have created this path she will follow. There is the early love affair; the other actress who pulls that apart. And right in the middle of Lara’s career, an accident that sidelines her physically. I don’t want to share too much here, only to say it creates physical and mental pain for Lara, so that we then have to fall back on those philosophical words, said by Maisie: Everything leads to the next thing.
And yes, this is true, though revelations continue to the very end of the novel. Will you root for the actor who broke Laura’s heart with another actress? Such a common occurrence. No, you will begin to love Joe, the owner of the cherry farm. And to get you there, I share this passage. This is Patchett at her best, saying so much about a marriage, about what the reader does and doesn’t know about this particular marriage; but what all of us assume and take for granted when we love someone. The passage…all about trust.
For so many years I have kissed him. For so many years I have not kissed another soul, and there is a deep and abiding comfort in this. Joe is not Duke. Joe was never Duke and I would never have wanted him to be. From the couch Hazel gives a low growl. “What about her,” Joe asks.
“She can’t climb the stairs.” He looks at the dog. “Really? I just thought Maisie liked to carry her.”
“She does.”
“Can you stay awake while I take a shower?”
“I can.” I follow him up the stairs. We leave the lights on, because before we know it, one of the girls will be home.
The reader knows a great deal of Lara’s past before she married Joe, before she had children and lived on a cherry farm. So we, and even Lara’s three daughters want to know why their mother didn’t marry this actor from Hollywood, DUKE. Why did she marry Joe, who also had acted in local theatre before deciding to buy and run a cherry farm. Patchett writes about Lara’s daughters: “they were relentless…why hadn’t I married Duke instead?” Because as we have already been told: everything leads to the next thing.
And even though we know some things, that Duke left Lara for another actress, not so subtle for Patchett, still we turn the page, knowing we are always in good hands, trusting Patchett knows everything there is to know about cherry picking.
“The buckets around our necks hang from canvas straps, and when they’re full we empty them into lugs.”
A lug weighs 25 pounds and yields 8 to 12 quarts. An average of 17½ pounds makes a 7-quart canner load; 11 pounds makes 9 pints. An average of 1 pounds makes 1 pint of frozen cherries. Quality. Select freshly harvested cherries with deep, uniform color and ideal maturity for eating fresh. Maybe you didn’t need to know, but I did.
Then toward the end of the novel, one of Lara’s daughters decides that maybe her father is not Joe, but Duke, the actor the reader knows Lara slept with in her youth…forcing Patchett to work that into the narrative, keep us guessing…
Emily was fourteen when she decided to tell her mother that Peter Duke was her father.
And Lara replies: “Where did you get that idea?”
“You don’t even deny it,”
“Of course I deny it. I just wonder what could have made you think it.”
“Because it’s true.”
“Emily, it’s not true.”
“How would you even know?”
…Emily was genuinely frightening, and at the same time I wanted to laugh for the sheer lunacy of it all. “I would know because I would have been there.”
“But you’d lie about it. You lie about everything.”
The argument proceeds, Emily being certain she should be living with this actor, Duke, claiming she has Duke’s hair. So yes, once again, as the novel proceeds:
Everything leads to the next thing. Thus early on in the novel, Patchett writes in Lara’s point of view:
Two year later, Emily decided Duke was her father, Maisie decided Emily has been possessed by Satan, and Nell decided she wanted to be an actress who would never come home again, though that might have happened anyway.
6 Responses
I read the book and loved it. She is an awesome author.
Thanks for commenting, Teresa…and thanks for reading the novel!!
It’s been a minute since I read Patchett. Might need to pick this one up.
Love Ann Patchett and have read many of her novels. This one sounds great. I’ll check it out. Also love how “everything leads to the next thing.”
Thanks, Laurie. I’m with you. That sentence said by a character just underlined the purpose of the novel. From sex to picking cherries, it runs the gamut.
As always, thanks for your comment. So appreciated, Beth
I’m totally intrigued. Another of your recommendations I need to get!