The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 27 August 2007
by Maxine Swann
Time passes, generations pass. Some of us watch that TV show about the long-lost rock stars and one-hit wonders from the 60s and the 70s, laughing at the things we thought were once cool. Beneath the ironic detachment from our recent cultural history, though, lies a certain anxiety. Time passes, after all, and once in a while we need to reflect on what has come before and ask the question, what was there that was good in those times, and has it endured? The 1960s are, of course, much lamented, often reviled, and looked upon with nostalgic longing as well as lofty scorn. We have some idea what happened to the hippies of that era, many of them now well within their golden years. Their children often look back upon weird and wonderful childhoods, often having been children of very young people who were still finding their independence and still sowing their own wild oats. These children of the children of the 60s might look back with embarrassment. After all, a woman named Cinnamon is a conservative columnist for a San Francisco newspaper. Others might look upon their unorthodox past and seek the childish wonder they had in those years. And so, we come to this small novel by Maxine Swann. The book, ostensibly fiction, definitely feels highly autobiographical. We read of four little kids, two boys and two girls, children of hippie parents raising them on a little farm in Pennsylvania. The chapters of the book shift narrative viewpoint, between one of the girls and the third person. The opening chapter, adapted from a prize-winning short story, is an elegiac listing of the oddities of growing up with hippie parents. This opening story has the tone of "gee whiz, can you believe what these kids had to live with?" The author is urging the reader to either nod with recognition or shake his head with some kind of pity. Neither works quite right in these opening pages. The book turns to more direct narrative, though, and becomes a wistful reflection on one girl's childhood. The book doesn't belabor its countercultural roots, but more gently reflects on the puzzling position that children of hippies were put in. They had to enter a world their parents were trying to reject or to change, a tiny vanguard of the revolution. At the same time, with that childhood imperitive, they yearned to be part of the crowd. This conflict resolved itself in different ways, and some kids always loved the offbeat difference they had from their peers. Others rejected the counterculture of their parents (going so far as to become stock brokers and conservative columnists!). The definitive book on the 60s, that generation and their children, has yet to be written. It may never happen. Until it does, though, we have little books like this, sincere, emotionally rich, well written narratives that explore the life that has come before.