Arcadia Paperback – October 2, 2012

My rating for this fine novel is a solid 4.5. It is the story of Ridley Stone--called Bit for reasons that are made clear during the story--and his life growing up in, growing out of, and growing to understand (mostly) a counterculture commune founded at the time of his birth: 1968.Lauren Groff's prose, at its best is breathy and luminous. The early part of the novel is told from a very young child's perspective, though not precisely in a child's voice. The result is a sense, almost, of magical realism. Very serious and adult behaviors and conversations are seen through the lens of love and childish normalcy, sometimes allowing the reader a great deal of dramatic irony--you know that some troubling things are afoot, but young Bit does not.Those who enjoy lush description and an unhurried pace will love especially the first part of the novel, those parts that happen during Bit's childhood. Props also for several plot choices that build a great deal of tension, enough to balance the moments of slow reveal, in this reader's opinion.There is so much about the communal life that Groff got right, that it is stunning to find that she is barely a blink above thirty. Having lived that life myself, I can say that these characters and their circumstances really aren't so stereotypical as one might imagine. I did feel from time to time that the author probably owes a debt of gratitude to work such as TC Boyle's Drop City and that wonderful counterculture classic Spiritual Midwifery (for example, the midwives of Arcadia referring to uterine contractions as "rushes"). In the end, though, Groff most certainly distilled her sources and made them, abundantly, her own.Just a few things dropped this novel out of the 5 star category for me, and not by much. One was a credibility problem with a commune functioning at this level for such a long time--into the early 1980s. There were enough seeds of human error sown (as there are in any such utopian endeavor) early on that I found it hard to believe that the same people would have held together for such a long time before the bottom dropped out. I felt that this time frame was somewhat forced on the author by her choice to end the narrative in the year 2018, with a middle-aged Bit and his return-of-sorts to Arcadia. I also was ambivalent with the choice to have a dystopian health crisis make such a noted appearance, to little actual effect. Finally, a minor and probably finicky loose-thread question: Why create that improbable and fascinating underground emergency tunnel between Arcadia House and the Octagonal Barn, and then allow it to drop out of the story almost completely?I sank into Arcadia and lived in it without coming up for air, and came away moved by its beauty and imagination, and beset with thoughts about days long gone, and how we move forward on our brief journeys by loving one another. A wonderful read.

This is the story of Bit, beginning with his birth in a hippie commune in the 1970's. More than half the book is the story of the commune and its rise and fall, from its idealistic beginnings to its disintegration brought about by egoism and other human frailties. While Bit is nourished by the lifestyle, others of his contemporaries seem to be destroyed by it, principally Helle, the daughter of the leader and Bit's first love.The rest of the book concerns Bit's life in New York City, after leaving the commune at age 14, and extends to his early middle age. It very briefly describes Bit's initial adjustment to the real world and his re-meeting and marriage with the damaged Helle, before a concluding section set in 2018. This final section includes Bit's relationship with his and Helle's daughter, a world-wide pandemic, and a long and graphic account of the death of his mother from ALS.Thematically, the author seems to be commenting on the entropy of modern society and on the possible ways to deal with it. Her conclusions seem to be that just trying to change things makes a difference, that a small like-minded community can help (the Amish neighbors of the commune are frequently referenced), and mainly that the circle of family love can make the struggle worth attempting.The first part of the book is fascinating, told from the viewpoint of young Bit in very concrete and immediate detail, particularly in his interactions with his parents. Although the writing is sometimes overblown and hints of the MFA Creative Writing tendency of over-reaching for arresting metaphors, it is often beautiful. I would actually have preferred that the book would have ended here.The rest of the book seems rushed and "tells about" what happened rather than presenting a picture. Only the death of Bit's mother is detailed, and that account is needlessly excruciating to read for anyone who has seen a parent's decline, especially as I cannot see any purpose in emphasizing this aspect of the story. Bit's romance at the end seems tacked on and unconvincing.All this carping about the faults seems petty, since this is a much better novel than usual, but I was expecting so much more from reading the beginning section that I became very disappointed in the ending sections. Also, I felt that the depiction of the state of the globe was overly dramatic and pessimistic.I believe most people would consider this an excellent novel, and I can see why it was considered a contender for the Pulitzer. I'm sorry I couldn't like it more.

I am not one of those readers who likes waiting for bad things to happen to good characters. I felt like that is what happened in most of the first half of the book. You were just waiting around for the Arcadia experiment to fail in the worst way possible and it does. The second half of the book though redeemed itself. A note on Arcadia: the author doesn’t mention this in the acknowledgements but it seems pretty clear that some of it including the circumstances of Bit’s birth were taken from birth stories recorded in Ina Gaskin’s book Spiritual Midwifery. Very much of the community life of Arcadia seems coloured by the stories in that book. Groff goes well beyond these of course but the close parallels were I thought worth mentioning.

This novel tells the story of Ridley Sorrel Stone, nicknamed Bit - "the littlest bit of a hippie ever made!" when he is the first baby born to a group of travelling hippies, who finally establish a commune centred around the grounds of a decaying mansion called Arcadia House. Bit is the son of Abe and Hannah and the group is led by the charismatic musician Handy. This is the time of Vietnam and what begins as a few dozen idealists grows and establishes itself. To my mind, the parts set during Bit's childhood are the most fascinating, because, of course, people being human nothing can remain as idealistic as it sounds. Abe challenges Handy's authority, Hannah suffers depression, there is hunger, cold, lack of housing, drugs, hardship and hard work. However, this extreme isolation is not always seen as negative. Although the author shows the rise and downfall of Arcadia, it is obvious that Bit does not see the experience as something to run from and he carries many of the dreams and aspirations of his younger years into his adulthood, along with 'family' ties to others from the commune.In reality, this is a family saga of sorts, with the community providing Bit with the family he needs into his adulthood - with all its ups and downs, problems and difficulties. I enjoyed this novel a lot and wished, in fact, that it had been longer. Bit is a wonderful character, so sweet and kind, and it is really refreshing to have a central male character represented in this unstereotypical way - neither macho, nor violent, but sensitive and gentle. Interesting take on a social experiment and would be an ideal book for reading groups, with much to discuss.

This novel begins with a very young boy, nicknamed Bit,on a commune, Arcadia, in 1970s New York. He was born into the commune -called the Free People - and his parents, Hannah and Abe, are key figures. Much of the life on the commune is told through a child's eyes. We pass through a decade of life wherein the Free People experience some success and the much greater failure that characterised such experiments in social living. The author describes well the light and dark of such utopias.We next find Bit in his early 40s teaching in a city college. To describe the story from there on - to its conclusion in 2018 -would spoil the plot really. However, the author makes the point that modern city living may be just as dystopian as the hopeless hippy dreams of the 1960s. The conclusion finds us and Bit back in Arcadia in a very different world. Maybe Arcadia still offers some answers.The closest novel I can compare this with - if comparisons are valid in amazon reviews - would be TC Cooper's  Drop City . So much of writing on the modern commune - non-fiction and fiction - offers the standard "nice idea, but" analysis. However, Lauren Groff does a bit more. She takes her characters into the real world and the big city, and back again. In the end Lauren Groff pleads a more balanced nuanced view.Of course Arcadia has to succeed as a novel, as a good story and I did really like it. There are a number of characters who recur apart from Bit himself; the reader wants to know what happens to all the people we meet in the beginning. Each is explored both as a person contributing individually to the story. But Lauren Groff is also asking how can such people live together, what type of society works best. Does city living cause deviancy and crime and abuse? Does communal living cure it? Conversely does a commune without rules lead inevitably to dictatorship and abuse? I think the questions she asks are very material and explored well. Drop City

I enjoyed 'Arcadia' from beginning to end, it drew you into the world of a commune where they are rebuilding a mansion renamed 'Arcadia' and the life of Ridley or 'Bit' as he is known because when he was born, someone said he was a 'littlest Bit of hippie' from birth to adulthood.Bit is a lovely character to read, you see how much of a part of the commune he is and how close the commune is as they help and look after each other. The original members of the commune are a large feature in Bit and his family's life and as Bit grows he sees people come and go within the commune, runaways, unwed pregnant girls, also individuals who love the idea of a commune but find they do not love the way of life in a commune.Bit definitely is the essence of the story and its wonderful to see the world through his eyes.Recommended.

This is such a beautiful book - I took a while to read it which isn't like me - but it's stayed with me. You care about the characters and they are really warm and alive. The story is told from the point of view of a child who grows up in an intentional community in America - and it explores family, community, love, how your childhood experiences play out in the rest of your life. But never in a preachy way at all. How children accept the world around them because it's all they know. I was really touched by it - it's not all happy by any means but it leaves you with that contented feeling when someone has expressed something about the nature of life that you felt - but could never have articulated.