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Lead book review

A cherry orchard, three sisters and a summer romance: Tom Lake, by Ann Patchett, reviewed

Alex Clark enjoys a poignant story centring on a cherry orchard, three sisters and their mother’s past love affair

29 July 2023

9:00 AM

29 July 2023

9:00 AM

Tom Lake: A Novel Ann Patchett

Bloomsbury, pp.316, 18.99

Two plays guide the reader through Tom Lake, Ann Patchett’s ninth novel: Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, the story of ordinary lives in a small New Hampshire community in the early years of the 20th century, which, with its radically stripped-back staging, sets time and place in the context of all time and place, and enjoins its audience to ponder what is truly valuable in human life; and Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, the story of the battle for an estate that throbs with conflict, violence and, ultimately, destruction.

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