Review of Arcadia, by Lauren Groff

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.