Welcome to Litsy!

I think this is my second dud from Reese‘s Book Club. This book was written well but just boring. Soooo boring. Set during Covid with all her daughters home, a mother decides to tell her girls her life story and all her glory playing Emily in Our Town. I think I made it 100 pages in and was just over Our Town at that point. I would definitely try this author again but just couldn‘t get through this one. #hailtothebail

After loving The Dutch House on audio with Tom Hanks, @Billypar let me know that Meryl Streep is the narrator of Tom Lake and I had to listen. I loved the story of mothers and daughters and how we become disillusioned about what we believed to be true or important in our youth. The book portrays their relationships as adults as they look back on the past, experience the present and look toward the future. The pandemic is there but subtle.

Mostly listened to this on audio. It was masterfully written - Patchett is unparalleled in that regard. The story—I didn‘t really connect with the story. Partly I was rankled by the MC/narrator, Lara‘s, rosy wistfulness about the COVID lockdown. It‘s one of my pet peeves (partly because my family did not have a cozy, bread-baking, ‘growing closer free from the distractions of hectic life‘ experience). But partly I just felt a bit detached 👇

I love Ann Patchett. I love Meryl Streep. I love "Our Town".

So, yeah, I loved this book on audio.

⭐⭐⭐⭐✨/⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

This was an ok read. It helped giving my head a break from some heavy stuff going on around. The writing was good but story-wise, I liked Bel Canto a lot better.

It‘s really rare that I listen to audiobooks, but I‘d heard that this one, read/performed by Meryl Streep, was exceptional—and that was absolutely the case! Both the book itself and the reading were outstanding, and this kept my mind occupied on a long road trip last week. So so good.

Read by Meryl Streep. Fantastic.

#coverstories
#lake

@Eggs
@Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks

I'm a big fan of Ann Patchett, but this story was not my favourite. Also, it refers to the play "Our Town" constantly, which is not as well known outside of the USA, so I assume I missed a lot of clever parallels?