Tom Lake
by Patchett, Ann
- Used
- Very Good
- Hardcover
- Signed
- first
- Condition
- Very Good/Very Good
- ISBN 10
- 006332752X
- ISBN 13
- 9780063327528
- Seller
-
Nashville, Tennessee, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Harper, 2023. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good/Very Good. Signed by Author(s). Fiction First edition, signed by author. Dust jacket has edge wear, minor creases, minor scratches, rubbed corners/spine. Boards have edge wear, rubbed corners/spine. No writing in text.
Reviews
On Nov 20 2023, a reader said:
Tom Lake is the ninth novel by award-winning, best-selling American author, Ann Patchett. As the world turns upside down with a pandemic, Lara's three daughters come home to their Michigan orchard to help with picking when their many regular pickers cannot. In their early- to mid-twenties, Emily, Maisie and Nell are picking the sweet cherries that urgently need to be harvested. And as they work, they insist that Lara tells the full version of a story they've heard before, one that features star of stage and screen, Peter Duke.
When she was sixteen, Lara (then Laura) Kenison was helping with auditions for the play her small New Hampshire town was putting on, Thornton Wilder's Our Town. Without any acting ambition of her own, by the time she had listened to numerous young women making a poor job of Emily Webb, Laura, stage name now Lara, decided she could do better. And it turned out to be so. She had a real knack for the role. A reprise of the role in college, where a Hollywood director spotted her, and she was suddenly in a movie.
Eventually, she's once again playing Emily for the summer stock theatre season in Tom Lake, Michigan, where an unknown, but very attractive young actor is playing Emily's father, Editor Webb. The chemistry between them is instant, and neither holds back.
Lara's account of what happened at Tom Lake that summer is interrupted by questions, comments, exclamations and criticisms from her three quite different daughters and, very occasionally, a contribution from their father.
Not every intimate detail is shared; some of the things Lara recalls, she keeps to herself, but: "I look at my girls, my brilliant young women. I want them to think I was better than I was, and I want to tell them the truth in case the truth will be useful. These two desires do not neatly coexist, but this is where we are in the story."
Patchett evokes her era and setting with consummate ease. Her characters spring to life and stir a myriad of emotions. Her descriptive prose is wonderful: "She could get more information across with an eyebrow than other people could with a microphone… her thoughts passed across her forehead like a tickertape" and her turn of phrase marvellous: "… It's the weight of the past that's pinned us there…". And no reader could ask for a better plot. This is quite possibly the best novel of 2023.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Defunct Books (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 054275
- Title
- Tom Lake
- Author
- Patchett, Ann
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- Used - Very Good
- Jacket Condition
- Very Good
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- 1st Edition
- ISBN 10
- 006332752X
- ISBN 13
- 9780063327528
- Publisher
- Harper
- Date Published
- 2023
- Pages
- 320
Terms of Sale
Defunct Books
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About the Seller
Defunct Books
Biblio member since 2004
Nashville, Tennessee
About Defunct Books
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Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...
- First Edition
- In book collecting, the first edition is the earliest published form of a book. A book may have more than one first edition in...