The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 29 May 2012
by Lauren Groff
We are a product of many influences, but perhaps those that occur in our earliest years are the most long-lasting, when it comes to who we are at heart. There are some who say you are basically formed in your personality before you're four years old, or even younger. This is most pronounced in those who have had unusual upbringings, kids who lived through trauma or adventure. So, what about the children of the hippie generation, the people who thought they could change the world by living in revolutionary (but not historically unprecedented) new communities? In this novel, we visit Arcadia, an upstate New York commune that has echoes of many alternative communities, expired and extant, such as The Farm in Tennessee. The commune itself is a relative late-comer on the scene, getting its footing in the late 60s or early 70s and enduring through the early 80s. We know this, as we follow the life of young Bit, a diminutive little boy born as the commune was forming, and who lived there with no contact to the outside world until he was fourteen. Groff's sprawling depiction of this commune is vivid, poetic, colorful, and full of the scents and tastes of that alternative community. We see much of it through Bit's precocious eyes, the adult interactions and conflicts, the politics of the place, and its disasters.
The book is two stories, though. After a short transition of Bit's adulthood, we find him in middle age, with a teenaged daughter, in a world facing a global epidemic, and taking care of his aged and ailing mother, Hannah. Here we encounter Bit as formed by his history. He is a lonely character, seeking the kind of community he lost in his childhood, and finding bits of it in unlikely places. This is a somewhat lonely novel. The people of Arcadia are an isolated and lonesome bunch who go their separate ways and feel lost in the world. Bit is devoted to the small family that remains to him, but seems to be suffering an inablity to break out and seek his own dreams. While it was clear to this reader that Groff set out to depict what was good from the alternative communal lifestyle, that which still has something to teach us about responsibility to one another, there are still long passages of the novel that are relentlessly somber. There is a great deal of grief and loss here, as well, despite the exuberance of life at Arcadia back in its heyday. Still, Groff paints a convincing picture of intertwined lives and conveys a sense that there is something wrong with the community of man, something that a communal sensibility may help us with. She makes that clearer by relating Arcadia to a nearby Amish community, and showing us how tightly knit an extended family can be. And yet, there is that thread of loneliness that runs through the book, almost as if its author remains not entirely convinced of her own argument. It comes out as a thought-provoking and memorable story.