Book review | Ann Patchett’s ‘Tom Lake’ is as warm as the winter sun

American writer Ann Patchett with her latest novel 'Tom Lake' (Bloomsbury Publishing; 320 pages; Rs 799). (Photo: Twitter)

Kindness is a rare commodity because it doesn’t usually come with benefits. It offers gratitude, however, that doesn’t fade away with time. Ann Patchett, in her latest novel, Tom Lake, weaves her narrative through the needle of her protagonist Lara’s memories, which are both fun and painful.

Patchett’s women and men appear acutely ordinary on the surface. They do not carry sticky traits that will make them stand out on a literary map, as in an Ottessa Moshfegh novel, for example. But ordinariness in itself is never a red flag, and I’ll always be in awe of writers who can make the wind sing even when there’s no wind.

At 57, Lara recounts the tale of how she became an actor and later stepped away from the limelight for her three daughters, who are all in their 20s. Can there ever be anything simple about an actor’s life? Actors are placed on platforms, for better or worse, and, hence, are not afforded enough privacy to conduct their day-to-day affairs without their dreary movements being recorded. But Lara doesn’t attain superstardom even though every person who has ever worked with her vouches for her immeasurable talent.

Patchett, through Lara who mostly listens to her inner voice rather than the vacillating echoes of society, seems to say that external validation alone isn’t enough for a person in the creative field to keep going. Actors, just like novelists, need a certain kind of engagement in order to thrive. Art cannot be marketed in a vacuum, after all, and artists cannot survive on token words of appreciation. Why does Lara, then, reject fame and Hollywood to live on a farm in northern Michigan?

When Lara realises, at a poignant moment, that she needs to quit acting, she rips off the Band-Aid. She doesn’t seek advice from her colleagues, or ponder over what the future holds for her. Her steadfastness, one should note, guides her through the highs and lows. Furthermore, as much as Tom Lake is about Lara’s journey, it’s also about passing the baton to the next generation. The farm that Lara and her husband, Joe, have nurtured for more than two-and-a-half decades will, without a doubt, go to one of their daughters. Similarly, the story about Lara’s younger days also acquires the color of a family heirloom.

The daughters want to know about the person who was in love with the actor Peter Duke once upon a time. In other words, they want to learn more about Lara before she becomes their mother. Patchett, while taking a peek into Lara’s past, excellently lays out the circumstances that point to how the latter ends up in Michigan. In what comes across as an endlessly playful loop, the names of Lara’s daughters (Emily, Maisie, and Nell) are borrowed from the past. So, there it goes: they are not random names plucked from the air. They have a history of their own. And their history completely depends on the people that Lara encounters along the way.

Lara is the bridge that holds everything together in this novel that’s set against the backdrop of the pandemic. But the talks regarding masks and vaccines are quite limited here. This isn’t to say that Patchett doesn’t care about them. She probably does, but it’s not as important as the sub-plots that deal with the swimming sessions that involve Lara and her friends or the unmistakable bond that Lara shares with her grandmother.

Even climate change, which is currently a hot-button issue in the West, makes a fleeting appearance via Emily, who announces that she doesn’t want children. She reveals, “I can eat vegetables and ride my bike and stop using plastic bags but I know I’m just doing it to keep myself from going crazy. The planet is fucked. There’s nothing I can do about that. But I’ll tell you what, I’m going to spend my life trying to save this farm. If anybody ever wonders what I’m here for, that’s it.”

Patchett’s long-standing style swings between the poles of inimitability and intimacy. She makes sure that her readers turn each page with the feeling of having earned something: a friend, an anecdote, or at least a semblance of truth that powers the world. Patchett’s prose looks up to register the silver linings of clouds. There are no dark clouds anywhere; only the ones that haven’t been polished yet. If a paid vacation is out of the question, perhaps the next best thing to do would be to pick up Tom Lake this month.