PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ----- It's the summer of 2020, and Lara and her three adult daughters, who have returned home during the pandemic, are picking cherries on the family farm in Michigan. To pass the time, the girls beg Lara to tell a story they have always known - that when she was younger, she was an actress and for one season worked in a summer theatre with a man who went on to become a very famous actor. Each of the girls have a romantic and differing vision of this time, but as Lara retells the old story, she corrects their assumptions - but is she telling the whole story even now? This is a beautiful novel about love and family, of how children never see their parents as anything else but parents, and certainly not as people with complicated pasts and desires. It is warm and wise and wholly engrossing, and because it's Patchett, full of gorgeous imagery and quietly impressive turns of phrase and characters you believe in. Every new Patchett book that comes out, I think is better than the last, but this one - this is her best. Lindy
'Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature' Guardian
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.
------------------------- Praise for The Dutch House:
'Patchett leads us to a truth that feels like life rather than literature' Guardian 'The best book I've read in years' Rosamund Lupton 'Her finest novel yet' Sunday Times 'The buzz around The Dutch House is totally justified. Her best yet, which is saying something' John Boyne 'A masterpiece' Cathy Rentzenbrink 'Bliss' Nigella Lawson
Ann Patchett is the author of eight novels and three works of non-fiction. Her most recent novel The Dutch House was a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller, and longlisted for the 2020 Women's Prize. In 2002 she won the Orange Prize for Fiction with Bel Canto, a prize she has also twice been shortlisted for with The Magician's Assistant in 1998 and State of Wonder in 2012. She is also the winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2012. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. She is the co-owner of Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee, where she lives with her husband, Karl.
ABBEY'S BOOKSELLER PICK ----- It's the summer of 2020, and Lara and her three adult daughters, who have returned home during the pandemic, are picking cherries on the family farm in Michigan. To pass the time, the girls beg Lara to tell a story they have always known - that when she was younger, she was an actress and for one season worked in a summer theatre with a man who went on to become a very famous actor. Each of the girls have a romantic and differing vision of this time, but as Lara retells the old story, she corrects their assumptions - but is she telling the whole story even now? This is a beautiful novel about love and family, of how children never see their parents as anything else but parents, and certainly not as people with complicated pasts and desires. It is warm and wise and wholly engrossing, and because it's Patchett, full of gorgeous imagery and quietly impressive turns of phrase and characters you believe in. Every new Patchett book that comes out, I think is better than the last, but this one - this is her best. Lindy
One of our greatest living chroniclers of love and marriage – and its resounding impacts over generations – is back this summer ... Expect wonder; Patchett always delivers * Elle * Patchett’s intricate and subtle thematic web ... enfolds the nature of storytelling, the evolving dynamics of a family, and the complex interaction between destiny and choice ... These braided strands culminate in a denouement at once deeply sad and tenderly life-affirming. Poignant and reflective, cementing Patchett’s stature as one of our finest novelists * Kirkus Reviews (starred review) * Masterly ... A love letter to both storytelling itself and the bonds that tie family and friends together, Patchett has once again worked her unique brand of magic with this gentle, tender story that glows with heart and humanity * Bookseller, Book of the Month *
