This little, poetic book soared above my expectations. Equal parts sunshine and shadow, it tells the
story of Bit, a boy raised in a hippie commune in upstate New York.
Any fiction about alternative lifestyles of the 1960's and
70's has the unfortunate potential to become an anticommunist or antianarchist
screed. Groff easily avoids that pitfall
by focusing on the hard work of a back-to-the-land, build-society-from-scratch
commune, combined with an exacting eye for the personalities (and clash of
personalties) involved. Telling it from
the perspective of a sensitive boy makes it possible for her to explore the
outcome: what kind of man is made from a childhood that's built on hard labor
and semi-starvation, livened with the beauty of nature and communal love.
The book is told in four parts: 1) Bit as a 5-year-old boy
when the commune is first being built in the early 1970's, 2) Bit as a
14-year-old, experiencing the commune at it's height and sudden downfall, 3)
Bit in his late 30's living in New York City with his young daughter, and 4)
Bit in his 50's, returning to the land that once held the commune to care for
his ailing mother.
What holds all these pieces together isn't just Bit's story,
but the lives of the women around him.
Groff makes it clear that the women of the commune are its center and
what keeps it together for so long, and Bit is their child more than he is the
child of the men who ostensibly make the big decisions. Each section of the book is defined by Bit's
relationship to key women in his life: the first section belongs to his mother,
the second to his teenage love, the third to his missing wife and daughter, and
the fourth brings him back to his mother--to the source, so to speak, of his
life.
In this journey, Groff touches on interesting themes of
freedom vs. responsibility, individuality vs. community, and loneliness vs.
connection. And they emerge as a natural
part of the narrative, never as a sermon, so that this book goes down as easily
and sweetly as a fine glass of wine.
