I am reading the book "Tom Lake" written by Ann Patchett. It is a book about a mother telling her three daughters the story of a long ago love affair, during a season doing summer stock theatre, with a person who is not the father of the three girls. The book is also about their father, a little bit. It is, therefore, about relationships, and different types of relationships, and different types of love.
I am not finished the book. I am enjoying it. It is not my type of book. I will, as a general rule, read anything. Or, at least, I would. Since Gloria's death, for some reason, I have not been reading. Well, of course I have been reading: I always read. But I have been finding reading more of a trial, and a task, than a pleasure. Reading for study, or reviewing books, has always been more of a task than a pleasure. But I have always read for pleasure, all my life. Until Gloria died.
I don't know why reading isn't a pleasure, anymore. And that's not completely true. But the books that are a pleasure to read seem to fall, pretty closely, into one particular category these days: comedy. I have always loved comedy, of course. But I always read all kinds of books for pleasure, and these days it seems to be only comedy.
There are books that talk about funny situations in funny ways, such as Carl Hiaasen. There are books that are witty, and absurd, like Terry Pratchett. At the moment I am rereading stuff by Terry Pratchett, and, as a general rule, I almost never reread anything. But, at the moment, I'm getting pretty desperate. But anything that has some humour in it, is candidate. "The Gun Seller" would generally be considered an adventure story. But, as well as being a good adventure story, and supremely well written, it is also one long setup for the very last sentence in the book. Some people wouldn't think that that was fair. Some people would see it as the world's longest shaggy dog story. I thought it was delightful.
Anyway, that's maybe a bit of a digression. Then again, I don't know. I'm not even sure what the point is of telling you all of this, but, I should probably get back to "Tom Lake."
Romances are not necessarily my thing. Therefore relationship books are not necessarily my thing. Good books, well written, are generally my thing. But, as I say, these days my favorites seem to be confined to the solo category of comedy. No, this is not one of those books that I look forward to picking up again. It's a book that, when I sit down, I notice it sitting there, and think, oh yeah, I can read this. This isn't bad. I'm sorry if that's not fair to Ann Patchett, who must be a really good author, if, in my current state, she has written something that, even if it's not something I can't put down, it's something that it's at least something that I'm willing to pick up.
But, as I say, it's about relationships. And, I think primarily, it's about the mother's relationship with her girls. I am not finished the book. I point this out because I need to say that one of the reasons that I am at least willing to keep going with it, is that it's about relationships where nothing really bad happens. (Yet.) At least not with the central characters. At least, so far, in the book, nothing terrible has happened with any of them. There have been other bad things that have happened, and even a death, but it's not within the central core of the central characters. And nothing bad has happened within their relationships. Their relationships are happy. The relationships are loving.
I have also, finally, read the promotional blurbs on the back of the book. I usually am not interested in reading what other people's opinions are of books. The blurbs that are given on the back of the books are either professionally written, by people whose job it is to make people want to read the book, or possibly by other authors who may have enjoyed the book, but whose primary interest is getting people to read, and buy, more books of any type at all. So I usually don't care what the blurbs say about the book. It's usually just lies anyways.
One of the blurbs said that the book is insightful. So I thought about that. This book is about relationships. In particular the relationship between a mother and her children. These are loving relationships. They are happy relationships. Is this book insightful? Is there any insight to relationships in general, or parent and child relationships, that is particular to this book? I don't know.
But it started me thinking of whether this was an insight to parent and child relationships overall, and therefore I thought about my own parents relationship to their own children: that is, us. My siblings and myself.
In the book, and mentioned multiple times in the book, the mother, at her stage in life, notes that her greatest happiness is being a mother, having her children, being with her children. So, I think about my parents. Now, I have to be careful to point out that I am not complaining about neglect or abuse. But I'm pretty sure that, for neither of my parents, the happiest moments in their life involved being with us. Neither of my parents ever indicated, by word, or deed, or even simply a beaming smile that couldn't be stopped, that the happiest thing in their lives was us kids, as we were.
Now, apparently, my parents did, at times, to various people, say that they were proud of us kids, and sometimes proud of us individually. However, I don't ever remember them saying that to *us*. My parents just never seemed to be happy with us. Contented, possibly. Accepting, yeah, maybe. Resigned, likely. Happiest in their entire life? Nope.
Is the happiest that I have ever been to do with my kids? Well, that would be difficult, since I don't actually have kids. I was enormously happy with my grandkids. I even have video proof of that fact. I am delighted with any time that I get to spend with my great-grandchildren. Even at this extremely difficult stage in my life.
So, I really can't say whether "Tom Lake" is insightful. I do know that it's good writing. It has to be, or I would have given up on it by now. So, if you were wanting to know if it is a good book, and you are into books about relationships, I would have absolutely no difficulty in saying that this is a book that you want to read.
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