Choices

It is cherry picking time in Michigan.  It is also the pandemic and Joe and Lara’s three adult daughters are sheltering with them at their cherry orchard.  Picking crews are scarce so the whole family goes out from morning till night to bring in the crop.  To help pass the time, the daughters persuade their mother to talk about a brief time in her life when she was an actress having an affair with an actor who became a famous movie star.  How could she have left the glamorous life of the theater and him to marry a cherry farmer? 

When she was in her 20s, Lara had the lead role, Emily, in Thornton Wilder’s Our Town.  It was summer stock in Michigan; she was made for the part; the sun was hot; the lake was clear; the cherries were ripe; she was in love. But as in Our Town, the idyll came to an end. 

There is, however, a second love story in Tom Lake. Lara, now in her 50s, has been happily married to her much more than cherry farmer for a long time and has no doubts about her choices. Her husband and their daughters, the friendship and continuity of farm life, the bounty of the cherries, the pleasures of ordinary life, all more than hold their own for her.  The two stories, thirty years apart, intermingle, sometimes in the same paragraph, but the timelines are chronological and  easy to follow.

 I wonder if Patchett, who loves Our Town, thought about a “what-if” scenario and wrote Tom Lake to give Our Town a happy ending.  Lara, Joe, and their three children live the life George and Emily wanted, but didn’t get, in the play.  The titles are even similar – two short words – same number of letters.

There is a second famous play that inhabits Tom Lake.  After all, it is a cherry orchard they live on, not a wheat farm or cattle ranch. How does Anton Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard, about social upheaval in Russia, fit into rural Michigan?  In both plays, the families must confront the eventual loss of their beloved cherry trees.  At the end of Chekov’s play, the orchard, in the family for generations, must be sold to pay debts. In Tom Lake, global warming threatens the trees and Joe and Lara’s children look towards having to replace them with a different crop.

It isn’t necessary to be familiar with the plays to enjoy the book, but the overlap of themes and techniques is lots of fun to spot and adds an interesting layer.  The texts of both are easy to find online and free.

In 1930s prewar Japan, Masuji Ono belongs to a school of painters who record the world of the pleasure districts.  Here, at night, men live in camaraderie and good spirits, laughing, drinking, basking in the praise and flattery from the women who work there. True, all disappears in the morning, but it was real for a time, and shouldn’t its beauty be recognized? 

But times change. War is coming and Ono rethinks the kind of art he should be making. His paintings change to sharp militaristic images that support Japan’s quest for power.  He is rewarded for his patriotism and savors his success.

As the book opens, the war has been over for two years and the artist is looking back on that decision. Was he wrong to use his talent to encourage aggression? It seemed so right at the time. The image of lanterns flickering “causing one picture to fade into shadow and another to appear” is the metaphor used for passing time and changing perspective. The story is told in non-chronological flashbacks, as memories surface.

To balance this philosophical main plot is a secondary one exposing the less pleasant customs of Japanese life. Ono’s family is involved in marriage negotiations for his younger daughter. Both families hire detectives to ferret out anything unfavorable, either socially or financially, about the potential partner’s relatives. There is an obsession with status and appearance; there is pride and fear of making a mistake; nothing is said about love.

But it is the men’s disrespectful view of the women that is the most appalling. Grandfather says to his grandson, “What a nuisance these women are…Tell those women…” He is speaking to the child about the little boy’s own mother and aunt.

As befits a novel about an artist, the book is filled with beautiful imagery, the floating changing worlds and the flickering glow of lanterns.  Even the presentation of the physical hardback book is striking.  It is totally lime green, including the edges of the pages. The unusual setting, Japan under American occupation so soon after the war, adds another layer of interest.  I liked this complex thought-provoking book. 

The title of the play, Morning’s at Seven, comes from the poem “Pippa’s Song,” by Robert Browning.  But he has the sweet song sung by a child.  Just a bit too sentimental for the adult world?

The year’s at the spring, And day’s at the morn; 						
Morning’s at seven; The hill-side’s dew-pearl’d; 							
The lark’s on the wing; The snail’s on the thorn; 							
God’s in His heaven - All’s right with the world!

She says it will be “Ordinary” Barbie, not a president nor an astronaut, just an ordinary woman, because that is enough. Alas, that new doll is only in the movies.

The good news is that it has been published as a book; the bad is that it is now on the “restricted” or banned list at a Florida school because of just one parent’s complaint. “It might cause confusion,” she says. 

We've braved the belly of the beast.
We've learned that quiet isn't always peace,
And the norms and notions of what "just is"
Isn't always justice.