Tom Lake, by Ann Patchett (but taking in Lee Child along the way.)

 I've recently been following some of the BBC Maestro courses about writing, and very interesting I've found them. (For more about these courses, see here.) The last one I did was with Lee Child, the author of the Jack Reacher books.

Now, I'd never read any Jack Reacher books before starting the course, but I've read several now. There's lots to say about them, but the thing I particularly want to focus on is that once you start one, you really don't want to put it down - at least I didn't. This despite the fact that I found the violence a bit much - there were times when I felt I needed to be reading from behind the sofa, or with one eye closed.

But that apart, they are really impressive. The prose is spare, the characterisation is strong, the plots are intricate and clever. 

In the course, Child is very clear about the sort of fiction he's writing and why he's writing it. Of course, one driver is that he always wanted to be a best-seller, and that he undoubtedly is. But another is this. At one point he discusses the difference between popular fiction and literary fiction. The latter, he says, is addressed to people who are already readers - who love books. These readers, he says, know that sometimes they will have to be a little patient. Their books may start slowly: you may have to work at getting into them - though when you do, the rewards may be great.

But the kind of reader he's chasing is not this kind. He is after the person who doesn't read very much at all. If this kind of person picks up a book - say to take on holiday - s/he will not be patient. S/he will want to be hooked from page one. At the end of every paragraph, every chapter, s/he will need to be enticed into reading on to the next. And if the writer has done his/her job, at the end of the book, they may have become a reader - someone for whom reading has become a joy and a habit.

Perhaps it was because I have so recently come across Lee Child that I find myself at a little bit of a loss with this latest book by Ann Patchett. 

It concerns a family who have a cherry farm in Michigan: Lara, Joe, and their three grown-up daughters. During one summer, as they pick the cherries, the three daughters nag their mother into telling them the story of a romance she had as a young actress with a fellow actor, who later became hugely successful, called Peter Duke. The youngest daughter in particular is obsessed with Duke, in a way that I never quite understood.

And so Lara tells the story (though not quite all of it). The narrative moves between the present and the past. It explores first love, different kinds of love, the mystery of what our parents were like before we knew them, the process of finding out what we really want to do with our lives. It's beautifully written: the farm is vividly realised, as is Tom Lake itself (the setting of that early romance). The characters are complex and interesting - particularly the older generation: I didn't feel I got to know the daughters, but perhaps that was partly because they didn't have much to do except listen.

And yet, and yet: I started this several times before I gave myself a metaphorical slap on the knuckles and told myself to just get on with it. I enjoyed reading it, but at the end, I thought - well, very nice, but actually so what? A pleasant read, but I'm very aware, when I look at the reviews, and hear the enthusiasm of friends who are great fans of Ann Patchett, that I'm missing something. I don't have that sense at the end that ah yes, this is telling me something important, something I didn't even know that I didn't know - if that makes any sense. And this isn't just a comparison between apples and pears, between Lee Child and Ann Patchett - a book certainly doesn't have to be a thriller to leave you with that sense that you've been made to see the world in a slightly different way.

Perhaps it's just me. So please, all you Ann Patchett fans out there - explain to me what I'm missing!