Tom Lake: emilie’s most recent rec

Disclaimer: slightly unpolished — written mostly on a whim.

This book — Tom Lake — by Ann Patchett was an insanely stunning read. I’d say that this was one of my near-favourite reads in the past little bit, because it encapsulates so much wisdom of being a mother, as Lara Nelson (our narrator), way past her years of youth looks fondly back at her memories, all with moments of warm joy, blips of ecstasy, and very true, very real, but crazy and devastating circumstances, told with aged closure. It made me feel like I was her — not just a mother of three children she loved dearly, but also her past twenty-something self, the version of her where she was just climaxing in her career, and lost but guided at many junctions. And how she fell in love with Peter Duke, this famous actor now, before he was famous, and how the love was there, and how his charm was tangible, even though she is married now at 57 and could not be happier than ever with her husband, Joe. There are layers of closure that arise in this book, with her and Duke’s break-up itself, her recount of her relationship with Duke told to her daughters as a central anchoring narrative of the book, and with the news that Duke, as a public figure, died on a yacht, reaching her current self, reaching a new level of finality and closure in something she once had. As Lara repeatedly expresses calmly, there is nothing else in the world that she would trade for in this life, but to be on this farm with the Emily, Maisie, and Nell (her three daughters), picking cherries, with Joe. However, there are parts of our past that we also cherish, even though they do grow stale, the parts with fieriness, the genuine yearning, and the drive to live life in such reckless, youthful ways with endless opportunity to squander (an illusion that is a luxury in those moments). Those memories were undeniable. This entire narrative is hidden to her daughters, and most parts, her three girls have never heard of or dreamed of her mother being young or reckless or in love, and assume those versions do not exist. And Lara, our narrator, narrates with such grace, such complexity, sharing parts of the people who she was once in love with, filtering and selecting but sharing things in a weighted, balanced, manner to her kids who are endlessly curious about their mother’s lifetime before them, but still indulging them in the very real feelings and things that have happened. Our parents almost seem to be blank slates before we were born, but they’ve had their own aspirations, passions, careers, drives, and people they cherished and held so closely but also swallowed with mixed bitterness. She shares these memories with her now twenty-something daughters, at the cusp of a global pandemic, stranded on their Michigan farm, very much with their own personalities and quirks, loves and distastes, and their own unique and singular chance at life and pathway that they’re paving for themselves.

With regards to Lara’s own reflections, some of the most pivotal moments in her life, like why she left her escalating career, her debilitating injury, some deeply personal choices that she’s made for nobody but herself, and how she fell in love with the Peter Duke, these memories have not crossed her mind for five or ten years at a time, and she doesn’t view it with much joy or hurt, but just sees it as the passage of time. Over time, things do fade, even though when they come up, they feel as closer to heart than ever.

Lara is a wonderful mother — this book quite charmingly captures soooo much maturity, and wisdom, and genuine closure and appreciation for the one life we have, at a sliced cross-section of time, where there are layers in our past that have accumulated and have baked together, but where not much can be changed anymore. As someone who has not yet been a parent (and there really is an emotional layer to being one), I think that this book gave me insight into how our parents must see things, and to them, the feelings that I cannot put into words from this book, might just come to them like second nature. It’s simple to think that — with age comes wisdom— but it is more complex than that. Wisdom is somehow felt, with the passage of time and events. This book let me reach out and touch those feelings, albeit briefly, of truly coming to terms with your life and the decisions you’ve made looking back, with that softness simply embodying a new sense of wisdom.