Summer theatre, summer flings and Hollywood.

Genre : Fiction / Romance

Pages : 320

Format : E-book

First published : 2023

Original Language: English

Start date: 1st Feb 2025

End date: 7th Feb 2025

The plot: During the pandemic, Lara’s three grown daughters are all, for reasons of their own, back home living on their parent’s cherry farm. After discovering by chance that their mother once had a relationship with a well known Hollywood actor, they ask her to tell them the story.

The young Lara is a talented actress, who has rarely moved beyond one single role : Emily in the play Our Town. After appearing in several amateur dramatics productions, she is offered the chance to play Emily in a summer stock theatre production taking place in Tom Lake, Michigan. There she meets Peter Duke, another actor in the cast, with whom she quickly begins a passionate affair.

As readers, we know that the affair will not last beyond summer, that Lara will not pursue a career as an actress, and that shortly after that time she met and married another man.

What we don’t know is why.

What did I think of this book?

I wasn’t expecting to like Tom Lake – many reviews of the book said it was slow, dull, and the plot meandered. I was pleasantly surprised. It intrigued me from the beginning, and I found it to be neither slow nor meandering.

It’s a character driven story about memories, and the difference between youthful love and married love. Memories by their nature meander – our thoughts and reminiscences rarely occur in a straight line – and I felt that this element of the plot was sort of the point.

What did I find most interesting?

Given the build up to their break-up (and Lara’s frequent assertions that she barely thinks about Peter anymore – me-think the lady doth protest too much, I recall thinking at the time), I half expected that the ending of their relationship would be more dramatic than it was. When it comes, the end of their affair is almost an anti-climax (she injures her Achilles tendon and cannot continue acting in the play, he drops her like a stone and begins sleeping with another actress). Essentially, he ghosts her. It is over and the only thing that can be done is to move on.

In many ways, the end of their relationships leaves the reader with more questions than answers: was Peter’s rejection of Lara the reason she stopped acting? Was she more deeply affected by their break-up than she realized? (I suspected she was) Indeed, there is a despondency to the passages when, recovering from her injury and the discovery that Peter has met someone else, she sews costumes for the play, as it is now the only work she can do for the production.

What will I take away from this book?

Tom Lake confirmed my belief that not all love affairs are meant to last. Certain people are only meant to be in our lives for a short amount of time – our time with them was short, but it meant something. Peter and Lara’s fling is just that : they make no promises to each other (other than tentative plans to relocate to Los Angeles at the end of the summer season), they never say I love you. I believe that Lara loved Peter, but that he was simply too invested in his career to be capable of love at that time. (This explains why his acting career went from strength to strength, while hers ended shortly afterwards).

Had things been different, would their relationship have lasted? I don’t think so. Had the affair lasted beyond that summer, their careers would soon have taken them in different directions. In many ways it was doomed from the beginning.

Rating : 3.5/5

Will I enjoy this book? :

You might, if you’re prepared to give Tom Lake the time and attention it deserves. It’s a slow burner so you’ll need to stick with it past the first couple of chapters, which focus on scene setting and the world of amateur dramatics. (The affair itself doesn’t actually begin until nearly a quarter of the way in)

Have you read Tom Lake? What did you think?