Part of the charm of Tom Lake by Ann Patchett is that it calls into question: what are the stories we tell and what are the stories we keep to ourselves-even from our own children?

With Hamza, Sakina had been fabulous—funny, unpredictable, utterly nonconforming to expectations—but only to the extent allowed by his disapproving gaze and after their big fights, when they weren’t on speaking terms and she was temporarily released from his influence.
Without him, there would be no limit to what she could be.

a man drenched himself in gasoline /
to protest the Biafran war. He’d stood across the road /
from lunatics cheering for him to die.

Certain things we just don’t want to know about until they’re real, to admit that a time comes when the only good parts left are all in the past, a time when we can no longer tread water, no longer put food to our own lips, no longer hobble to the bathroom on our own, no longer hold ourselves upright, no longer get into a car unassisted, no longer do any of the things that living requires without the need of someone else’s hands, without the need for someone to hold us up.