Ann Patchett has a confession. “This is such a hard thing to talk about, but I was very happy during the pandemic,” she says sheepishly. We are chatting via video call, Ann in her Nashville home, a picture of contentment surrounded by soft furnishing. “You don’t wish suffering and death on the world, it’s horrifying, but really my dream scenario is that I would just be locked in my house. I wouldn’t ever have to go out to dinner and I wouldn’t ever have to get on a plane, and the person I would be hanging out with would be my husband. The world would be really small,” she explains.
“I had such a revelation during the pandemic. Everybody I needed to see was in a three-block radius and suddenly the people who are central to my life were the people in my neighbourhood. We would swap groceries and any time anybody went to the store we would say, ‘Do you need anything? I can get you this, I can get you that … ’ It was really lovely for my privileged self.
“I don’t have kids and I wasn’t trying to homeschool anybody and the house is big, there are plenty of bathrooms. But honestly, I know a lot of people who felt the same way, who felt like this was a magic time in which not only does everything stop but the presence of death makes us appreciate life.”
It’s a feeling that became the backbone for her new novel, the beautifully crafted Tom Lake, in which Lara, husband Joe and their three 20-something daughters are locked together on the family farm as the world grapples with COVID somewhere beyond our sylvan scene. As they urgently pick cherries, the sisters get to ask their mother to tell the one story that has always intrigued them – about her wild, whirlwind romance with famous actor Peter Duke.
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