An Extraordinary Summer at the Beach
Plus, a review of Ann Patchett's Tom Lake.
Last night at dinner my husband said to the kids, “Do you know how lucky you are that you get to go to the beach all summer?” The kids looked at him a bit dumbfounded: Doesn’t everyone go to the beach all summer? Kids only know what they know. Leaving the suburbs and shuttling to the beach for the season is how they’ve passed every single one of their Julys and Augusts.
But they are lucky. Oh so very lucky, and so am I.
Similarly, I grew up in a house with a sliver of a view of the Long Island Sound. We lived on the water all year and when summer came, we were unleashed onto the sand we waited all year to enjoy. There was no money for camp. My parents both worked full-time. That meant most weekdays from the age of ten or eleven I was home with my older and younger sister trying to find stuff to do. The beach was all there was.
I would walk a sandy path at the end of our narrow residential street and take 168 steps down to a private stretch of sand. Don’t get the wrong idea. Our house, a winterized summer cottage, was teeny; we had one bathroom for three girls and two parents.
But the water was our playground. I’d spend many mornings letting my black lab dog Sam run the empty beach. I might spend an afternoon glueing together shells or painting rocks. I’d swim around the big boulder that towered just off shore, admiring the mussels clinging to it, the lush green of the algae. I’d read novels. I’d write in a journal. I’d sit in the dune grass and watch deer. I’d meet a boy and we’d flirt with our towels arranged side by side. On bad days, I’d sit there and vow to get as far away from my family as I could get. On good days, I’d vow to never leave.
When I was at the beach with my husband and kids yesterday, I was thinking about my next novel. In between swimming with the kids and taking a long walk, my mind wandered to my characters. The first line of my next novel popped in my head and I scribbled it down. I heard the haunting words of a letter from one character’s father that is uncovered early on. Once again, I pulled my pretty teal notebook from my beach bag and found myself scribbling. Being still has always made my imagination come alive, perhaps from all of those years reading and playing on the beach.
Place is a critical part of my novels; the setting is what gets me excited to begin. Often I want to explore how my characters interact with the setting and how the setting helps shape who they are. In Ann Patchett’s new novel Tom Lake, the setting is a cherry farm in Northern Michigan, and it’s a critical part of each and every one of the character’s story. Just like the beach, they rely on the cherry farm and its crystalline lake to help define who they are, whether that means embracing it or running from it.
The story centers around three daughters who arrive home during the pandemic to help their parents pick cherries, since all of the workers are forced to remain home in lockdown. After meeting at a play where the father is the director and the mother is the star, they fall in love and take over the family’s beautiful cherry farm. While they’re picking cherries in pandemic times, the now-grown daughters beg their mother to tell them the story of how she first came to to Tom Lake, Michigan to be an actress and how she dated a (Brad Pitt-like) movie star that same summer.
I cannot say enough about how special this novel is. The characters, the setting, the back story, the emotions. When I closed the book, I looked up at the shimmering sea and thought: Ann Patchett is a writing God and also a very lovely person. You MUST read this book for both reasons.
But seeing the connection to the land that the daughters had, understanding why this mother chose to live on this cherry farm, and glimpsing their version of a sacred summer, made me understand just why the beach is so special to me. Because it brings me back to a childlike sense of wonder. It allows my imagination to roam. It centers me and allows me to hear my voice, the voice that talks to you in your subconscious.
I write all of my novels while sitting on the beach. Not with a laptop. With a notebook.
Just like it did all of those years ago when I was a little kid and then a teenager and then a twenty something trying to find my way. Ann Patchett’s characters have their cherry farm. But I have my beach.
When my husband said to the kids, do you know how lucky you are to be at the beach, what he was really saying was: Do you know that these summers will stay with you for your entire life? Do you know that these summers are a part of your larger story? That these summers will make you who you are.
I’m so very curious: Where would you spend a perfect summer day? I know we have readers from Australia to England, so please share! Would love to hear. :)
I love your description of your summers at the beach. I've got lots of happy memories of summers spent on the beach where I grew up in Mumbles and on the Gower Peninsula too, both in South Wales. We'd spend all day on the beach, with our buckets and nets looking in the rockpools, having picnics on the beach and paddling in the sea. Oh and ice cream too!
I adored Tom Lake. I grew up as a latchkey kid in Kentucky. No memory of place, but I did love days at the pool.