Arcadia

ARCADIA

by Lauren Groff

 

Nominations: Carnegie Longlist 2013, Dublin Longlist 2014, LA Times Finalist 2012

 

Date Read: December 13, 2022

 

Arcadia is not just an engaging, entertaining read. Groff struggles with the question of the ideal community, established by very flawed humans. Bit is born in a VW bus, the first baby born among a group of hippies looking to establish their own commune. When they finally land in the forest of New York, the decrepit estate they find there is named Arcadia. Led by a man named Handy, living in buses, this group of hippies and misfits begin to set down roots and begin to build their communal ideal.

 

Living on the land is hard, cold, unforgiving. While relationships run deep and there is kindness and magic to be found in the forest, there is also children experiencing real life too early, jealousy, power struggles, hopelessness. For Abe and Hannah, Bit’s parents, there is certainly love but also depression for Hannah, who experiences a harsher life than she envisioned. Always there to pull her back up are Abe and Bit.

 

While one of the main principles of this group is to accept one and all, this acceptance will prove to be their undoing. With barely enough to feed core members, the strangers that arrive on their doorstep, bringing hunger and drugs, tax them nearly to the point of starvation. Combined with drugs and sexual exploitation, the group begins to drip away after a particularly egregious harvest festival where kids do drugs, almost no one has food and nearly everyone has sex.

 

Hannah, Abe and Bit, confronting an impossible situation and realizing it will never improve, also drift away, escaping with their few possessions and a broken down VW Beetle. They are able to establish their lives but Bit is shocked at the real world. In spite of the traumas of a communal way of living, he remembers singing and friendship. A feral pack of kids exploring the forest. Learning about nature and its abundance. In the city he finds cruelty and poverty. Violence and oppression. All ways of living are beautiful, with an inevitable ugly side.


Groff is deft at revealing the concept of home and family in a rich a well-fleshed out plot. Every page is revealing and deep, the love for family overflowing through the pages. One of the best novels I’ve read this year.  

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