The book is presented by Peggy.
Participants: Beth, Betsy, Denise, Katharine C, Peggy, Roșie, Sealia, Sue R., Susan A. Susan R., Wendy H, Wendy N.
Peggy began by asking whether we had read the Wikipedia biography on Patchett that she sent to everyone. Most people had read it and we thanked her for sending it. The thing that interested Peggy most was that the author shunned all contact with media—both TV and internet. Peggy wondered whether Patchett was not a little self righteous in insisting on this refusal. In fact later on in our discussion we pointed out that the author doesn’t perhaps understand how the new media work. Lara says they didn’t have social media back when she was her daughters’ age, so it’s impossible to find old friends online. But of course it’s not impossible. Most women Lara’s age can be found on Facebook. Had Lara wanted to, she could have found Pallace or her childhood friend Veronica.
Peggy asked the group what we thought was the theme of the novel. This question inspired lots of answers. For example, it’s a novel set during the Covid pandemic when the Nelson family is gathered on the cherry farm during lockdown. It’s a parenthesis in their lives when the adult daughters re-connect with their mother and give her the chance to relate an episode of her life. The novel is thus about memory and story-telling, about what Lara tells and what she leaves out in the account of the pivotal summer when she was part of a summer theatre company.
It is also about values. Lara has rejected the life of an actress and settled in the Midwest. So we discussed what the Midwest stands for in American culture. Some of the terms that came up were integrity, kindness, tradition and family.
Does Peter Duke share these values? No, we agreed that Duke is chasing the American dream of fame and fortune. The novel shows that that’s not all its cracked up to be. Pursuing success leads to destruction in Duke’s case. Lara’s daughter Nell has a similar dream. She wants to be an actress. Is the American Dream a midwestern value or not? We agreed that success is a value that’s part of American culture. Lara stops chasing it early on, but she allows her daughter to have her own experiences without discouraging her. Good parenting involves allowing children freedom to choose.
Thornton Wilder’s play, OurTown, looms large in the novel. Thanks to Mariannick who sent a link (and who, unfortunately, couldn’t attend because she has a bad back at the moment), we all watched Sam Wood’s 1940 movie version of the play. It’s a play that is hugely popular and long lasting. It is sweetly nostalgic and it champions the traditional values of strong family relationships and good neighbourliness. We discussed whether Thornton Wilder's characters are stuck in Grover’s Corner. Sealia joked that they only have horses in 1910 and can’t get very far out of town. Their horizons seem limited to us. For Wendy N. the play is tragic because Mrs Gibbs wanted to travel to France to see the wider world but no one supports her in her wish. She dies without realising her dream.
Lara has a chance to move to a wider world but she chooses Joe Nelson, her three daughters, and the cherry farm. The novel suggests that this is better than the life she would have had. So why is the main focus of the narration Lara’s “summer hook-up” with Peter Duke? Why do the daughters fixate on that moment in her life? The story telling is prompted by Duke’s death and also by Lara’s need to dispel Emily’s mistaken notion that Duke was her father.
A crucial part of the story that Lara leaves out is her abortion. Why doesn’t she tell anyone, not even Joe? She’s not storytelling for her daughters at this moment in the narration, but she’s remembering privately. Is leaving details out part of Patchett’s art or is it an attempt to soften the brutal side of life for readers wanting a happy feeling, those (in the Guardian review’s words) “who want fiction to soothe, bolster and cheer”? We talked about the stigma attached to abortion back then. Also perhaps it would be hurtful, especially to Emily, to know that a potential sibling was denied existence. Even when she confesses to readers that she has left out this part in the account of Peter Duke she gives her daughters, her narration is still elliptic. In fact some reviewers even wondered whether Emily might be Duke’s child. Our discussion of the novel’s time line
dispelled that idea. The pregnancy occurs several years before Lara marries Joe. She doesn’t go into the circumstances surrounding her decision or her feelings during and after. In fact, Lara is not very self-reflective. Wendy H. compared this novel to one she’s been reading recently (Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo), where we are given a running account of characters’ thoughts and feelings. Is Lara’s lack of introspection a defect of the novel? Is it part of Midwestern values not to talk about ugly things?
Lara’s character posed a number of questions. Other characters fall for her because she’s a blank slate or perhaps they think she is. Lara seems made to play Emily because she has no depth of character; she’s a home town girl, an ingenue, an innocent. She’s so strongly attracted to the theatrical life that she’s even willing to sleep with the director in New York to get the part of Emily. She is given opportunities and she goes with the flow, even doing things she doesn’t really want to like getting drunk on stage. Why did she abandon acting? She realises her own limitations after her accident when she sees Pallace play her two roles. She feels she’s not an actress, but rather she’s being type cast as Emily. That realisation is important. A turning point in the novel is the wheel chair incident, when she is left alone in the theatre to make her own way back to her quarters. She realises she can do it without help.
Another of the novel’s themes is that of growing to maturity. Lara does it at that pivotal moment when she takes the initiative and exits the theatre under her own steam. Emily matures when she learns about Lara’s injury. Emily can abandon her fixation on Duke because she realises how uncaring he really is. So the story is about a pivotal summer but finally, it’s not so much about Lara knowing the famous Peter Duke as about how she grew up because of the experience.
Why did Emily fixate on Duke? She was small when he visited. He’s obviously a charismatic presence and she found him to be a glamorous father figure, even though, paradoxically, she is also very close to Joe.
For Beth Lara was a wonderful character. In fact Patchett is known for her strong female characters. Beth liked the interaction between her and her daughters. Mother daughter relations is another of the novel’s themes. Lara’s relationship with her grandmother is formative too. The sewing she’s learnt from her gives Lara an option when she decides to abandon acting.
Readers wondered why Lara consents to have sex with Duke long after he’s dropped her. When he summons her to his rehab hospital he doesn’t even remember her name. She’s down as Emily Webb in the visitor roster. Duke definitely has a lot of charisma. For Wendy H. is also a question of the dynamic between men and women. Women are expected to submit, and Lara does what is expected. The whole “Me too” movement has exposed the asymmetrical power relations between the sexes. We discussed the depiction of women in Our Town. Their lives consists of cleaning, cooking, and washing. Only the men can realise their aspirations.
Why is so little attention given to Joe Nelson? He’s mainly just there in the background working on the farm. We concluded that perhaps good, healthy relationships aren’t interesting. Famously, Tolstoy begins Anna Karenina with the line: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” But in Tom Lake, ordinariness is one of the novel’s great virtues. It’s interesting that in Our Town, the people in the cemetery tell Emily not to think of the happiest day of her life, but to think of an ordinary day. Like the play, Patchett’s novel is a celebration of normality. Joe Nelson doesn’t stand out and that’s the point. Readers liked the way Patchett waits to reveal that the director/ stage manager from Tom Lake turns out to be Joe Nelson of the cherry farm. Another ordinary good person is Duke’s brother Sebastian. There’s a suggestion of an attraction between him and Lara, but neither moves to deepen the relationship. They both realise that it would be too complicated. Like Joe, Sebastian was adult - he has good values. Joe’s steadiness doesn’t mean he is without feelings. He admits that his heart stopped when he saw little Emily walking happily with Peter Duke.
Like Our Town, the novel ends in a cemetery. There’s the implication that Duke’s death is suicide —he drinks and swims away from the boat. He’s a self-destructive character, who, as one of the characters points out, confuses verisimilitude with reality. So he really gets drunk on stage during Fool For Love. And in the film the daughters watch, he actually does smoke crack when he’s playing an addict. This explains his later problems with addiction.
Peggy asked what we thought of the title of the book. A Tom Lake exists, or rather a Doc and Tom lake in Michigan. But Patchett gives the lake another meaning. There’s a story about a little boy who is told that the lake he plays in is called Tom’s Lake after him. He only learns later that the adults were fooling him. His realisation might be a parallel to the epiphany of the daughters. Water is a motif that ties things together in the novel. Besides Tom Lake, there’s a lake at the Michigan cherry farm, and Peter Duke drowns. The title also makes us think about names. Why does Lara name her daughter Emily? After all, Emily Webb dies in childbirth. Perhaps Lara has a positive memory of being Emily. It was key time in her life.
We discussed whether Pallace’s success in the summer stock was anachronistic or not. Is it just a sign of the contemporary urge to be inclusive even if it means distorting the past (as in recent British productions like Bridgerton or Les Miserables)? The novel does state that audiences were initially shocked to see a black Emily but that Pallace’s brilliant acting won them over. It’s interesting that her career didn’t take off as Duke’s did. The director says that there plenty of girls in Hollywood.
Katharine said she loved the book for its nuanced writing, especially Lara’s little asides. For example, when asked what happened to Pallace, Lara says she didn’t bother to ask (a convincing put down of the woman who betrays her). Denise mentioned the line about the rain giving up and going to Canada. Someone else mentioned the little detail of Lara forgetting to make the egg salad for lunch. These amusing remarks make Lara’s character relatable.
Finally some people loved the book and others were less taken with it. It’s a question of personal taste. Some of us found the Duke story more compelling than the family story and others felt the opposite. Duke comes back to the cherry farm. For some that means that the place was the point, like Wilder’s Our Town. Was the cherry farm the background or the foreground? The novel is a bit like those reversible black and white images where different viewers see a different picture. The discussion revealed a lot about Ann Patchett’s art and everyone appreciated the novel more afterwards.
