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Discussion Guide

Tom Lake

In the spring of 2020, Lara's three daughters return to the family's orchard in Northern Michigan. While picking cherries, they beg their mother to tell them the story of Peter Duke, a famous actor with whom she shared both a stage and a romance years before at a theater company called Tom Lake. As Lara recalls the past, her daughters examine their own lives and relationship with their mother, and are forced to reconsider the world and everything they thought they knew.

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. As in all of her novels, Ann Patchett combines compelling narrative artistry with piercing insights into family dynamics. The result is a rich and luminous story, told with profound intelligence and emotional subtlety, that demonstrates once again why she is one of the most revered and acclaimed literary talents working today.

These book club discussion questions were prepared by Bookclubs staff. 

Book club questions for Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

Use these discussion questions to guide your next book club meeting.

Why do you think Lara’s daughters want to hear the story of her past relationship with Duke?  What do they learn about their mother, and themselves, in the process of this relating?  On the flip side, do you believe that children can ever really know their parents?

There are some elements of her story that Lara chooses not to reveal to her family. Why did Lara choose to keep these elements to herself and what did you think about her decisions? Do you keep any secrets from your family, and if so, why?

Have you read or seen the play Our Town (or its movie adaptation)?  If so, was it before or after reading Tom Lake?  Why do you think Patchett chose Our Town as the play that Lara repeatedly performed?  How do the themes of “Our Town” relate to the themes of Tom Lake?

What did you think of Patchett’s decision to alternate timelines between the past and the present? What about her decision to incorporate the COVID-19 pandemic into the present timeline?

What did you make of Lara and Duke’s final encounter at the mental health facility?  Why do you think Lara chose to see Duke again and to become intimate with him again?  

Lara says, “There is no explaining this simple truth about life: you will forget much of it. The painful things you were certain you’d never be able to let go? Now you’re not entirely sure when they happened, while the thrilling parts, the heart-stopping joys, splintered and scattered and became something else.”  What does Lara mean by this statement and do you agree with it? 

Lara appears to be fully content in her choices and the way her life turned out.  (She privately confesses to Maisie’s dog that “If this were a movie, I’d be drowning in regret right now. But I’m telling you, Hazel, it doesn’t feel anything like regret. It feels like I just missed getting hit by a train.”)  Do you think she truly is that happy?  If so, what has enabled her to get to this place of acceptance?  If not, what do you think she is hiding or subsuming? 
 

Meryl Streep narrates the audiobook version of Tom Lake.  Did you read or listen to the book?  If you listened to the audiobook, what did you think of Streep’s narration?  In what ways did it add to your experience of the book?

Tom Lake Book Club Questions PDF

Click here for a printable PDF of the Tom Lake discussion questions