Whistler by Ann Patchett review – a saccharine story of reunion

A woman’s encounter with the stepfather she hasn’t seen for decades leads to a revived bond – but is it all too perfect?

I blame Meryl Streep. Once she’s in your head, it’s hard to kick her out. Streep narrated the audiobook of Tom Lake, Ann Patchett’s last novel, and I’ve played it so many times I listen for the rhythm now, not the story. Or perhaps the rhythm is the story. Nothing much happens in Tom Lake, which is to say that everything happens – life happens – but ever so gently. On a cherry farm in Michigan, a mother tells her restless, world-hungry daughters the tale of a long-ago summer romance, piece by piece, as they work the harvest together. It’s Scheherazade with pie.

Tom Lake is a lovely book, indulgently so. A pandemic novel that imagines the crisis as Edenic: a family thrown together with little to do but talk and remember and cherish one another. Sun-ripe fruit, rescue dogs, the future paused for one last impossible season. Some ingenue glitz; a whiff of tradwifery. A lesson – quite literally – in cherrypicking.