Tom Lake

1. General Impressions

Gather initial thoughts and broad opinions about the book.

• Consider this book in relation to other pandemic novels. Examples include Gary Shteyngart’s Our Country Friends, Elizabeth Strout’s Lucy by the Sea, and Sigrid Nunez’s The Vulnerables. What characteristics do they share? Where does Tom Lake set itself apart?
• Tom Lake is Ann Patchett’s ninth novel. What role does this book occupy in Patchett’s extensive body of work? How does it continue or disrupt thematic and narrative patterns established in her earlier work?
• How does Tom Lake respond to the emotional challenge of the pandemic? What is the book’s overall mood? Does it aim to provide comfort and solace? To capture a sense of collective alarm? To signal a period of transformation? 

2. Personal Reflection and Connection

Encourage readers to connect the book’s themes and characters with their personal experiences and perspectives.

• How does the story resonate with your own memories of the Covid-19 pandemic? Does its combination of isolation and community feel true to your own experience?
• Think of a time in your life when you realized that the path you were on was no longer right for you. Compare your experience to that of Lara as she steps away from acting.
• Which characters feel most relatable to you? Which, if any, do you identify with, and why? 

3. Societal and Cultural Context

Examine the book’s relevance to broader societal issues, cultural trends, and ethical dilemmas.

• Consider the Tom Lake Theater Company’s reluctance to put Pallace, a Black woman, in the role of Emily Webb. What does this suggest about racial attitudes in theater and in the wider culture in the time period? Have these attitudes changed?
• How does the novel make sense of the collective and personal emotions surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic? How does it balance grief with hope for the future?
• The story takes place both in the pandemic year of 2020 and in extended flashbacks to the 1980s. What resonances does it create between these periods? What does it suggest about how American life has changed and not changed in the intervening years?  

4. Literary Analysis

Dive into the book’s structure, characters, themes, and use of narrative techniques.

• Patchett tells two stories at once—that of Lara’s family in the present day, and that of Lara’s youth in the story she tells to her children. How does the frame structure impact your experience of the novel? How do these two stories inform and resonate with each other?
• Compare and contrast Lara’s daughters. How do they represent different visions of what makes a good life? How do they mirror different aspects of Lara’s own life and character?
• Because this book takes place during the Covid-19 pandemic, the family is effectively trapped on the grounds of their cherry orchard. How does this enclosed, isolated setting impact the story’s development?
• The novel centers a performance of Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play Our Town and alludes to Anton Chekhov’s 1904 play The Cherry Orchard. What do these allusions convey about the novel’s themes? What parallels exist between the novel and these plays? 

5. Creative Engagement 

Encourage imaginative and creative connections to the book’s content and themes.

• Imagine the novel as a play. Choose a scene that stands out to you as especially compelling and rewrite it in the format of play. Which descriptive elements can be preserved in stage directions, and which are lost? How does the scene change?
• Write a chapter from the perspective of either Emily or Nell. What do their private thoughts reveal about the emotional undercurrents running through this family? 

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