Tom Lake Study Guide

Ann Patchett was born on December 2, 1963, to police captain Frank Patchett and nurse Jeanne Ray. When Patchett was young, her parents divorced, and her mother moved the family to Nashville, Tennessee. There, Patchett attended St. Bernard Academy, a Catholic private school. She went on to Sarah Lawrence College, where she graduated in 1985. At Sarah Lawrence, she met fellow writer Lucy Grealy, and the pair became roommates and lifelong friends at the Iowa Writers Workshop. Throughout most of Patchett’s 20s after Iowa, she suffered uncertainty about the future. Eventually, however, she received a fellowship in Massachusetts that allowed her to write her debut novel, The Patron Saint of Liars. Patchett followed this with three more modestly successful books before publishing the PEN/Faulkner Award-winner Bel Canto in 2001. In 2010, Patchett opened a bookstore in Nashville called Parnassus Books. The store continues to enjoy a healthy clientele and social media presence. In the 2010s, Patchett published three novels: State of Wonder (2011), Commonwealth (2016), and The Dutch House (2019). The Dutch House was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize. Tom Lake, a great commercial success, is her most recent novel. Patchett currently lives in Nashville with her husband, Karl VanDevender.

Tom Lake takes place during the coronavirus pandemic, which broke out in March of 2020 and made quarantine and cessation of normal activities a public health necessity for several years. The COVID-19 virus first appeared in Wuhan, China in the fall of 2019. By the start of 2020, cases began to appear in humans, and by March 11, 2020, coronavirus was classified as a global pandemic. Within a week, college students like Maisie and Nell were told to vacate campus and return home. The atmosphere of “uncertainty” that Lara describes was widespread—particularly as misinformation spread on social media and aggravated preexisting political, social, and economic points of conflict. In addition, the climate anxiety that Emily articulates as part of her reasoning for not wanting children was steadily on the rise. Scientists have theorized about the effects of climate change for centuries, but as time goes on, its effects become increasingly visible. In 2019 and 2020, for instance, Australia saw one of its most bushfire seasons of wildfires ever. The season was called the “Black Summer.”

In an Author’s Note at the end of Tom Lake, Ann Patchett urges her readers to seek out Thornton Wilder’s classic play Our Town (1938). Anyone looking for a complete understanding of Tom Lake should consider starting there. To a lesser extent, the book also interacts with Sam Shepard’s passionate play Fool for Love (1983). Readers who appreciate Tom Lake and Our Town’s emphasis on the importance of enjoying life as it happens might also like Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library (2020), which follows a woman considering suicide who is given a magical opportunity to face and come to terms with her regrets. Those who took an interest in Lara’s journey through Hollywood and stage theater could try Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney’s Good Company (2021) for their next read. Like Tom Lake, the novel includes a small theater company, and it also examines relationships that change over the course of a lifetime and look different with perspective. Ann Patchett has had a long writing career and many literary friends and contemporaries. Most famously, her close relationship with Iowa roommate Lucy Grealy is documented in Patchett’s Truth and Beauty: A Friendship (2004), which follows Grealy’s own publication journey with her book Autobiography of a Face (1994). Patchett also befriended and collaborated with Elizabeth McCracken, who is best known for The Giant’s House (1996). Finally, those looking to read more Ann Patchett could start with one of her most popular and highly praised books: The Dutch House (2019).