This is a book so low key in tone that you could almost miss the kicker at the end, but not quite. In the time since The Dutch House came out to now I have read Patchett's entire oeuvre of memoirs and essay collections, which are much more revealing of her than her works of fiction are, and so this was an extra special pleasure to read as a result.
It is the quietest of quiet stories: a mother recounting select elements of her life to her adult daughters as they pick sweet cherries during the pandemic. Quiet, yes, but entrancing in ways significant and minute via the details tucked into the corners--classic Patchett.
Emily, Maisie, and Nell are stuck on the farm with their parents, Joe and Lara, as the pandemic rages. Most of their usual seasonal workers, in that first covid summer, can’t make it to northern Michigan for the short, intense harvesting season. Thus, given the work ahead of them to get the crop in, Lara has lots of quality time with her girls, who are clamoring to know the specifics of her early-career romance with a famous actor.
The minute details of this family captures so much of what is true in daily life and family dynamics, moving easily from laugh-out-loud funny to moist-eyed poignance, sometimes in the same sentence. The book moves back and forth between the summer that is being remembered and the current one, and there is so much wisdom about relationships in general, and the evolving relationships within a family as children grow to adulthood that this should simply not be missed, even if this turns out to be your first exposure to this author.
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