Arcadia

by Lauren Groff

Paperback, 2013

Status

Available

Call number

813.6

Genres

General Fiction

All Topics

Fiction

Collection

Recommended Books

Publication

Windmill Books (2013), 304 pages

Description

Fiction. Literature. HTML:NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER"Timeless and vast... The raw beauty of Ms. Groff's prose is one of the best things about Arcadia. But it is by no means this book's only kind of splendor."�-Janet Maslin, The New York Times "Even the most incidental details vibrate with life Arcadia wends a harrowing path back to a fragile, lovely place you can believe in."�-Ron Charles, The Washington Post In the fields of western New York State in the 1970s, a few dozen idealists set out to live off the land, founding a commune centered on the grounds of a decaying mansion called Arcadia House. Arcadia follows this romantic utopian dream from its hopeful start through its heyday. Arcadia's inhabitants include Handy, the charismatic leader; his wife, Astrid, a midwife; Abe, a master carpenter; Hannah, a baker and historian; and Abe and Hannah's only child, Bit. While Arcadia rises and falls, Bit, too, ages and changes. He falls in love with Helle, Handy's lovely, troubled daughter. And eventually he must face the world beyond Arcadia. In Arcadia, Groff displays her literary gifts to stunning effect. "Fascinating."-�People (****) "It's not possible to write any better without showing off."�-Richard Russo, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Empire Falls "Dazzling."�-Vogue.… (more)

Media reviews

New York Times

Lauren Groff’s “Arcadia” is so immersed in the life of a hippie commune that patchouli ought to waft off its pages. It’s a novel of the 1960s and ’70s in which acid is dropped, groats are served, “Froggie Went A Courtin’ ” is sung, a cult leader is worshiped and somebody literally

hugs a tree. An outhouse at Arcadia smells like wet muskrat. Children are reared in a Kid Herd. This does not sound like everyone’s cup of rose-hip tea.

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User reviews

LibraryThing member Polaris-

This book was so unexpectedly moving and beautiful. Yes, I had read that others thought Lauren Groff's writing really quite beautiful, and I was looking forward to a good tale set at a time when communes and co-ops were springing up all over far-flung fertile corners of the USA; but I did not

bargain for such a vivid and immersive experience.

'Bit' is a small boy, just "a little bit", born while his hippy parents are part of a caravan of like-minded idealists on the road and searching for their new communal home. Our story begins in the early 1970s, when he is already about five and we see the colourful and stimulating world he and his parents live in - initially through the eyes of a bright and sensitive child. Arcadia is the name of their home, many acres of arable land and woodland surrounding a large and dilapidated old property - Arcadia House. There are fruit trees and a stand of Maples they tap for syrup. We see the Arcadians at work and play as they gradually mould their own society, build their homes, and bring up their own generation of children according to their own values.

The story evolves and we move forward to a time when Bit is about 12, and later still to his mid-teens. Arcadia has grown as well, and predictably undergone subtle though significant changes. Without wishing to give too much of the story away, as Bit and his friends and family absorb those changes, Arcadia's existence and setting in the local landscape develops in ways its founders did not foresee. The imprint of the place's DNA though, remains indelibly present in those whose home it has been.

Later in his life, Bit lives in New York with his daughter, and his parents each have their own life elsewhere. All of the characters are so fully drawn. I cared so much about what becomes of them. Groff takes the reader on a journey through these people's lives, and I went with them almost as if in a dream. The final section of the book is set in a very near-future, as circumstances will lead Bit to return to where everything begins. Completely engrossing, and beautifully written, a really memorable novel.

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LibraryThing member Cariola

I enjoyed Lauren Groff's latest novel, Fates and Furies, earlier this year, so I thought I would give Arcadia a try. The two books couldn't be more different--with the exception that they both showcase the author's fine writing. Arcadia takes us through roughly 40 years in the life of Bit Stone,

the fist child born in the commune of Arcadia. Groff paints an idyllic if makeshift childhood for Bit amongst the waterfalls, forest, birds, and hippies. The Arcadians welcome anyone and everyone, which sometimes gets them into a bit of trouble; yet they generally eschew the outside world--except when money is short and their charismatic leader goes off on a tour of singing engagements.

Of course, as Bit matures, he begins to see the snakes and thorns in paradise: the privileges accorded to their leader despite an "all for one" philosophy, the growing drug abuse among his peers, his adored mother's weariness with a life of poverty, and more. Fast forward about 20 years. Arcadia has fallen apart, and Bit now lives in New York with his young daughter, making his living as a photography professor. Bit fills in the gaps on all the characters from his past life, and the reader gains insight into how the clash between his unconventional upbringing and the world he has had to adjust to have shaped his life. The story takes a somewhat apocalyptic turn towards the end that I don't want to give away. But overall, Arcadia is a novel built upon the power of memories, hope, and love, and in Bit Stone, Groff has created a character both recognizable and unforgettable.

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LibraryThing member Her_Royal_Orangeness

Beautifully written, masterfully crafted, and deeply melancholic, “Arcadia” is a gem of a book. It is the life story of Ridley ‘Bit’ Stone, divided into four sections highlighting particular periods of his life. The story begins in the 1970s when Bit is a toddler growing up in a commune in

New York State, and continues through his teenage years. The middle portions are when Bit is in his 30s, living in New York City and working as a professor while raising his daughter alone after his wife mysteriously vanishes. The final section of the book, set in 2018, is about Bit caring for his mother when she is stricken with ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease).

Groff’s prose is lovely and rich in imagery. Just as an example: “Pigeons sit heaped on the roofline, buttoning house to sky.” The characterizations are marvelous, slowly evolving over the course of the story until everyone in the novel has become as fully fleshed as a real person. “Arcadia” is quietly philosophical, exploring the meanings of freedom and community, and the importance of friendship, family, and love.

What I thought was especially brilliant was how Groff tied in the key points of Bit’s life with the larger world at the time. When Bit is a toddler - naïve, hopeful, trusting - this is also the attitude within the commune. Bit moves on to adolescence, a time of upheaval and confusion, and again this is what happens in the commune. Bit’s middle years are a time of loneliness and choices and loss, which is all mirrored in the yuppie culture and consumerism of the 1980s. And as Bit’s life as he knew it slowly crumbles, the world is also falling apart, from the events of 9/11 to a global pandemic. None of this is overtly stated or intrusive in the story at all. “Arcadia” remains wholly Bit’s story, with this theme of interconnectedness slowly drifting through the book.

It took me a while to become fully engaged in the story, partly because I struggled to understand the story from the viewpoint of a toddler, and partly because the pacing of the book is languorous. But when “Arcadia” finally captured me, I was spellbound. I fell in love with Bit, I cried through the last pages, and I was disappointed when the book ended and I had to let Bit go.

“Arcadia” is all I believed Groff capable of after reading her first novel “The Monsters of Templeton” and I’m already anxously anticipating her next book.

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LibraryThing member froxgirl

Okay, anyone considering writing a book on the hippie communes of the 1960s - 1970s: put down your pen and start pondering a different novel. This is the be-all, end-all, final word on all that.

The Free People are a large collective founded by a charismatic musical leader. They live together in

assorted temporary homes on a large landholding with a decayed mansion. They are well organized, with a bakery, gardens, a midwife service. But they are also hungry and cold much of the time, not a great atmosphere for raising children "without ownership", as the idealists dream on.

Bit is a premature baby, son of Abe and Hannah. We see Arcadia through his observant and older-than-his-years eyes. He sees his mother's seasonal depression and his father's clashes with Handy, the founder. He sees the pain of Handy's children, neglected by him and Astrid, who leaves to start a midwife school in Tennessee. He soaks in all the beauty of his physical surroundings and the bumbling incompetence of the collective as they allow visitors to overwhelm their limited resources.

Bit grows to be one of the Ados (adolescents) and although he does everything dumb teenagers do in any environment, his small stature, empathy and loving nature make him a beloved figure in Arcadia. Tragedy befalls as it would even in the suburbs, and the communards struggle on until their notoriety leads to the destruction of Arcadia and the scattering of the one-big-not-always-happy family.

Bit moves into adulthood, missing everyone. As surprising reunions and splits occur, the plot deepens as everything changes and comes to a head when he loses his parents but regains his lost family.

This is a classic, a never-to-be-forgotten magical tale. Thank you, Lauren Groff, for creating this difficult utopia and for understanding fully how those of us what participated were forever shaped by those unique times.

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LibraryThing member LizzieD

I loved Arcadia. The book covers fifty years in the life of Bit Stone, born into a hippie commune in 1968 and following him to a new beginning in 2018. As a woman only a little older than Bit's mother, I found Groff's recreation of the time spot on - the idealism, the courage, the obtuseness, the

cutesy humor all rang true. Groff's writing is beautifully transparent, and I know that I will reread this book for the language if nothing else. My only quibble is the lack of quotation marks, an affectation that I wish young writers would lose.
Bit is the heart of the story. As a tiny boy he struggles to help his mother win her way through long, dark winters as she succumbs each year to SAD. When, as an adolescent, the community falters and he is often hungry, Bit still loves the people and fights beside his parents to hold them together. His story works because of his great love for the people in his life His care for them makes him the hero of his story.
I recommend Arcadia to anyone who wants to feel close to an indomitable human spirit, and I thank ER for giving me the opportunity to meet him.

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LibraryThing member porch_reader

We follow Bit (so named because at birth, he was just a little bit of a hippie) from his childhood in the commune of Arcadia during the early 1970s to his adulthood in the near distant future. Bit is a special boy, sensitive and caring, loved by everyone in the close-knit community of Arcadia.

Despite the fact that Arcadia is the only way of life that Bit has ever known, he is a keen observer of both the benefits and the challenges. As the community changes, Bit must adapt as well, but despite the changes, Bit carries what he has learned in Arcadia with him throughout his life. Groff makes this observation in the following passage:

"He thinks of the rotten parachute they played with as kids in Arcadia: they hurtle through life aging unimaginably fast, but each grasps a silken edge of memory that billows between them and softens the long fall."

This story is beautifully written. I found myself reflecting on aspects of my own life and community as I compared them with Bit's community. Groff captures both the joys and the challenges of living in a highly interdependent community and also reflects the ways in which early experiences shape our adulthoods in different ways. But her real triumph is Bit. Not since Owen Meany have a met a character who is as unique and as easy to relate to as Bit. I was fascinated by the story because I was seeing things through his eyes.

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LibraryThing member Perednia

The story is vague at first, the how and why opaque as the amoeba grows, as the characters take shape and as the outline of what's going on takes its own time to form.

It begins before the protagonist is even born. Little Bit is the first child born to a group on caravan that eventually becomes a

commune. He knows the memory took place before his birth -- a group of women, including his mother, washing clothes in a cold river, people singing old folk songs, a bonfire and a small caravan on the move toward their eventual home. Before the skeptical reader gives up, know that Bit knows he knows the story because it has been told to him so many times that it feels as real to him as something he actually did experience. So is Bit's own story. He is, after all, "the first Arcadian ever" and his story "is another story so retold that everyone owns it".

This communal passing on of a story is the key to Arcadia, the latest novel by Lauren Groff. So is the sense that, while the novel takes place from the 1960s to the next decade, it is timeless, a tale the Grimm Brothers may have heard to pass along: "The forest is dark and deep and pushes so heavily on Bit that he must run away from the gnarled trunks, from the groans of the wind in the branches." The forest and the outdoors are as much Bit's world as the commune.

Young Bit disappears into the forest during a time his mother, Hannah, suffers from depression. He knows he is not her prince, but he still is on a quest to save her. Bit is living in a fairy tale.

He stays in a fairy tale for his entire life, as Groff fits what could really happen to a child born in a commune in 1968 through the glory days and the downfall, through the love and through the drugs, through the opting out of society and becoming a destination for partiers, into a "once upon a time" framework. Until that fairy tale quest, and even with the occasional fairy tale reference, the early Arcadia often feels like a rewrite of T.C. Boyle's Drop City, written with a child protagonist instead of the adult hippies. Other children's parents fight, the whole commune goes hungry and the ego of the ironically named leader, Handy, is on early display. It's not going to work, as all utopian societies turn out to not work.

But with that quest, Groff's intent emerges and shines through for the rest of the novel. Like the tale of the primordal creature who lived in deep waters in her debut novel, The Monsters of Templeton, Arcadia's strength is from the power of storytelling as an ancient activity. Bit's parents are the kindly center of the tale -- the capable and loving Hannah and Abe. They know how to do things. Their emotions are real. Their dreams are both within reach and beyond the scope of humans with normal foibles and failings.

Handy's children, and those of the other original Arcadia settlers, like Bit, grow up removed from normal society. They don't eat processed food or meat. They don't watch TV. They see childbirth and naked adults, and smoking pot is the norm. Groff delivers all these facts without embellishment and without judgment. This is simply their world.

The fall from grace is a slow-moving one. One character has a literal fall but continues to try to make the dream real. Others fall figuratively but their actions turn the dream into a nightmare and the community falls apart.

Groff, instead of next showing how Bit adjusts to life on the outside, next shows us Bit as an adult, as a father with his path already chosen. While some readers might want to see Bit's journey, this is a writing choice that proves to be a good one. Instead of watching Bit cope with civilization in a coming-of-age story, we know that he already came of age before he left Arcadia. Even though where he lives has changed (and all the children of Arcadia end up living in big cities, not wanting to be isolated), Bit remains true to himself. He lives with quiet integrity as the days go past. There is one incident where most writers would have Bit commit an act of folly. But instead of having to mutter "Oh dear, Little Bit, don't do it", the reader can instead see that Bit remains true to himself, to the way he was raised. It's sweet and one of the reasons to treasure Groff's writing so much. She knows how to make those little, lovely moments of humanity come alive.

It's only when both personal losses and a society crisis in the near future (a very plausible crisis) merge that Bit comes to his own turning point. But rather than an action to take or not take, Bit's turning point is how he feels. The key to his decision lies in the small moments of life. Even as a young child, the small noticings are important to him, as when he picks an icicle: "Inside again, he licks it down to nothing, eating winter itself, the captured woodsmoke and sleepy hush and aching cleanness of ice. His parents sleep on. All day, the secret icicle sits inside him, his own thing, a blade of cold; and it makes Bit feel brave to think of it."

Capturing the small moments of noticing is a talent Groff possesses in abundance. Toward the end of the novel, it is in being able to recall these small moments, that the ability to turn a moment into a memory that can be recalled as a story, that the beauty of fairy tales at their homiest shines:

He sits in the rocking chair beside her. The women's noises fill the house at his back. He will make raspberry jam in his head, he decides; he hasn't done any preserving since he was a boy. He closes his eyes. At first he forgets steps, has to backtrack to squeeze the lemons, clean the berries, measure out the sugar, pluck the glass jars from the boiling water. But when he relaxes, things go vibrant. He feels the furry warmth of fresh raspberries in his fingers, and the smell rises up, sweet and tingling, made even brighter by memory.

When things appear at their worst, Bit and the readers of his story are reminded we've survived bad things before. Maybe we will this time as well.

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LibraryThing member jasonlf

One of the best books I've read this year, Arcadia is a beautiful, moving saga that tells the story of Bit from womb almost to tomb. The story centers around his relationship to a commune his parents settled in when he was born and is told in four parts that depict four stages in his life: the

first remarkably told from the perspective of an observant toddler in the late 1960s, the second from an adolescent in the early 1980s as the commune clashes with Reagan's war on drugs and the old timers clash with the newcomers, the third as a roughly 40 year-old adult in roughly the present as he works to raise his young child, and the final set in the near future as he returns to his parents home on the commune as global warming and a pandemic dominate the headlines.

Arcadia covers so much emotional ground that it is hard to reduce it to any individual theme. Bit's looking up to idealistic but practical father, his trying to support his mother whose depression is especially severe in winters, his learning from the local "witch" Verda, his lust, marriage and subsequent loss of Helle the daughter of the commune's founder, and his raising their daughter Grete from a typical toddler to a teenager with an independent streak.

Arcadia, the commune, is like a character too--one that flourishes, collapses, and then is partially reborn as a tiny fraction of itself. And Arcadia casts a long shadow on the lives of the people who lived their, especially the children like Bit who were born there and knew nothing of the outside world until they were older, a shadow that Lauren Groff traces as various of the dozens of characters cross paths with Bit as the story unfolds. Throughout it all, Groff is not naive about the ideals of the commune and the large shortfalls of its residents, but her tone is more respectful than it is satirical.

Arcadia is not particularly plot driven, and all the dialogue is woven into the text without quotation marks, but it is in many ways a relatively conventional family saga--albeit an unconventional family and unconventionally told with only glimpses backward at many of the major events.

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LibraryThing member fuzzy_patters

Arcadia is a book told in four parts. The first two parts take place in a commune when the protagonist, Bit, was a boy. The second half of the book take place after the commune falls apart and Bit has matured. I found this part to be the stronger half of the book.

I found the first two sections of

the book to be too cute by half. The characters were exactly what I would expect to read about in a book about a hippy commune. They almost seemed to be cartoon cut-outs at times instead of real characters. I found this trait to be very off-putting and made it very difficult for me to remain interested in the story.

The second half of the book seemed to be much more real in that the characters began to take on some real depth. It was at this point that I began to actually care what happened to Bit. Yet, even here the book became a bit cliche at times. Some parts were better about this than others.

Overall, I would say that Arcadia was a decent read. I have read better books, but I have certainly read much worse as well. It would probably work better for someone who romanticizes the 1960s and the fall-out from that time period. Personally, I have never believed that the people that came of age during that time period had as unique an experience as they would like to think that they had, which probably influenced my opinion of the book.

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LibraryThing member JoLynnsbooks

An involving, lyrical novel, Arcadia is the story of a commune of 'the free people' in upstate New York, told through the character of the first child born into the community, Bit Stone. We see Arcadia grow and then thrive, largely through the efforts of Bit's parents and a handful of other free

people who truly embrace the principles on which Arcadia is founded. Bit introduces us to the many colorful characters of Arcadia, first through the eyes of a child, and later through the eyes of an unworldly but somewhat mature adolescent . Inevitably, the commune is destroyed by too many interlopers and the fall from grace of its charismatic leader, Handy. One by one the free people abandon or are banished from Arcadia. What will happen to them, and especially Bit, in the real world?

The novel is beautifully written. People and locations are portrayed keenly, vividly. Tenderness, love, beauty, pain. It's all here, and more.

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LibraryThing member LissaJ

I enjoyed this book a lot more than I thought I would. It is a beautiful story about a commune set up on idealistic principals that it doesn't always adhere to. The characters were well developed and interesting. I especially enjoyed the descriptions of Arcadia and the message of living in the

moment. I am very glad that I picked this one up from the library.k

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LibraryThing member jen.e.moore

Have you ever been so moved by something that you had to find something else to occupy your attention right now so that you weren't completely overwhelmed? That was how I felt after finishing Arcadia, sitting on my bed on a sunny morning last week, wondering what the hell happened to my life that

books about fathers who grew up in hippie communes could suddenly be so terribly important to me.

When I say I hate hippie novels, you have to understand, I don't hate hippies, or even the late 60s. What I hate is the awful strawberry-colored glaze that gets drizzled over everything in those books, the implication that since the world wasn't changed then it can never change now, the sense that nothing will ever again be as perfect as 1969. I suppose it's entirely likely that some people do feel that way, but I don't see why I should have to read about it.

Arcadia is not like that. Arcadia is, instead, a book about utopia, and what it means to grow up in one given the fact that utopias always fail. The title of the book is also the name of the commune, founded by charismatic Handy and his icy wife Astrid and their pack of followers, including our narrator, Bit. The first baby born in the commune (actually in the caravan on the way there), Bit knows nothing but Arcadia until his teens. He lives in a world where everybody works to build a better community, where marijuana is a major cash crop and sex is just a thing that happens. Seeing Arcadia through young Bit's eyes, you can't help but fall in love with it, even as you know - just as his mother obviously does - that there are some serious problems brewing, and nothing lasts forever.

I think the greatest success of Arcadia is Bit himself, a whole and entire person even at five years old, plausible but not necessarily completely realistic. (I'd like to reread this next too Room, actually, to see how the two child narrators compare.) His intensely generous view of the world helps you to love the things he loves, and his incredible perception makes sure you do it with full awareness of their flaws.While the promotion for the book puts the focus on the commune - including that incredibly 60s cover - Bit is the star of the novel, not Arcadia.

The novel is divided into three parts, the first (and longest) taking place in Arcadia itself, the second concerning Bit's life after Arcadia falls apart, and the third set in a not-too-distant future when Bit and his daughter have to care for his ailing mother amid increasing global catastrophe. I liked the Arcadia section best, myself, but the final section was also excellent, managing to avoid moralizing about climate change and the potential end of the world while using those themes to bring the novel to a truly excellent finish. Because Arcadia is a novel about how nothing lasts forever - not the good things in life, but not the bad ones, either.
In a Sentence:

Arcadia is one of those wonderful novels that takes a truly unusual character and makes his life important and relevant to everyone's.

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LibraryThing member tippycanoegal

This novel is a big, strange, ambitious marvel. I greatly admire it and I loved reading most of it despite the fact that the prose is slightly flowery for my taste. It is a portrait of an artist as a child and young man set in an American utopian community in the 1970s. Bit is the son of two of the

idealistic founders of the rural commune of Arcadia. The story of his early life entwines with the story of the commune itself. When the commune closes, the book continues to follow its community members, especially Bit and his family. I will say that I was most taken with the first sections about the very young and teenaged Bit, as he is a beautifully rendered child character (and I don't always love the way that child characters are portrayed in fiction, particularly sensitive, precocious ones, but this little guy was lovely and I was sorry to lose him in the adult that he eventually becomes). The pacing of the novel stumbles for me after it leaves Arcadia. I grew somewhat weary of the non-stop grief of the last two long sections, particularly the last, which is both dystopian and very sad despite the slight rays of hope peeking through the clouds at the end. I felt that the heart and soul of the novel was in its first two sections and I almost wish that I had stopped reading there, with the fall of Arcadia, but with the echo of its founding principles still resonant.

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LibraryThing member satyridae

Pure, I kept thinking as I read, this is pure. The prose rings like a bell and howls like a dog. The seasons of Bit struck me as close to home as anything has these past few months, and I lived in him entire for these few days. The book begins with his early childhood, an early 70s commune seen

through five year old eyes. From that base, we meet Bit again as an adolescent, then as a middle-aged man, and finally as he will be a few years from now. The world Groff built herein is so very believable, from the parts in the past to the parts in the near future, and that's one of the strengths of her novel. Her whole, believable, entirely alive characters are another.

This isn't light reading, nor is it easy. This is a journey over time, over emotions, and over all the scary things one can conjure in a life. The reconciliation, (for one knows, almost from the first page that there must be some redemption somewhere), is breathtaking and sere and lovely.

There are pieces that feel wedged in, and I'm knocking it half a star for those uneven spots. I may bump it back up on a re-read, but then again, I don't know that I can bear to re-read it. 4.5

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LibraryThing member aliciamay

The book starts in western New York State in the late 1960s with a bunch of idealist hippies forming a commune. Our narrator is Bit, the first child born in the group and we see his life at the commune at ages of 5 and 14, and then as a 30 something and 50 something in New York City. Life on the

commune is hard, with the constant work to produce food and heat, and it only gets worse when the commune attracts hundreds of questionable newbie’s (aka freeloading addicts). But this misguided utopia is Bit’s home and he knows nothing else. When the commune falls apart his parents make the hard decision to leave and start a life in civilization.

Groff has been touted as “one of our most accomplished literary artists”; I almost gave up on this book twice, both with the descriptive scenes of child birth, as a result of her artistry. I really didn’t like the story with the descriptions of hippie life (the filth, drugs, and casual sex) and I was indifferent to Bit and his struggles, but Bit’s father saved this from being a total loss of a read for me. Abe was a relatively minor character, but he was so solid, well drawn, and sympathetic. He trained as an engineer and gave it up to pursue a dream of something better for his family. He worked so hard trying to make his dream a reality that the defeats were all the more tragic. The other aspects of the book that I appreciated were the parts focusing on Bit’s adult life off the commune. The struggles he faced adjusting to life “on the outside” and how he and the other children of the commune came to terms with their past.

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LibraryThing member CarolynSchroeder

This book started off as almost a mirror of "Drop City" by T.C. Boyle, but then did lead off on its own path about half-way through into something less cruel and biting. I have to say, I really enjoyed the odd story, of life in a commune and how it was destined for failure. But also, some things

maybe "could" have worked. It felt like eavesdropping on this group of folks and watching them made really bad mistakes. There is all the uneasiness and sadness there (drugs and alcohol to children, abandonment, starvation, depression and confusion), but there is a simple beauty in some of the observations of what is community, alienation and education - the juxtaposition of a commune vs. life at large. At times, Groff's writing is beautiful, poetic and breathtaking. Other times, especially dialog (which is very preachy and just, bizarre) is kind of mediocre, heavy-handed and trite. Also, it is just hard for me to take any writer seriously with all the quote-less dialog, fragmented sentences, bad grammar and the like. But it is all I tend to see in contemporary fiction, so by default, I'm getting used to it. It sort of works here with all the non-traditional education(s) of the characters. Overall, I would say it is an enmeshing reading experience with some interesting characters (some truly repugnant ones too). Recommended, but may not be everyone's cup of tea.

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LibraryThing member Electablue

Community vs. Freedom
I highly enjoyed Arcadia, once I adjusted to the style in which it was written. At first, the use of the present tense made me feel disconnected from the story, but soon I was sucked in and felt that Dicken's Ghost of the Christmas Past had taken me on ride to view the commune

and I felt like I was really there, feeling their hope and anticipation for a better future. I also enjoyed the hints at the Utopian ideals and communities of the 19th century, which most people seem to have forgotten.
Bit's integration into mainstream society was interesting, and a part of the book that I would have liked to know more about. I thought the ending dragged on longer than it needed to be and I had trouble getting through that part.

At the end this book gave me a lot to think about and says quite a bit about modern society. In today's world people have a great deal of freedom, but they have lost the sense of community they once had. I liked the way that Groff had the Amish helping the commune, even though on the surface the Amish were so different, in some ways they had the same objective in the long run.

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LibraryThing member lesliecp

This book was one of my favorite reads of 2012. Arcadia tells the story of a commune in upstate New York through the eyes of Bit Sorrel, the first baby born to it's group members. As a child, Bit views his world as perfect, idyllic and safe. The tale grows in complexity as Bit grows older and

discovers the cracks and fissures in the perfect facade of Arcadia. Bit is eventually forced to leave all that he knows and enter the greater world. What he discovers about Arcadia and himself makes for a very interesting story.

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LibraryThing member PMelchior

Before you move to pick up a copy of "Arcadia," you will read rave reviews praising author Lauren Groff for her lyrical prose, her stunning descriptions of life within a free-thinking commune, the depth of her characters and the arc of her story.

They're all true.

The story of Bit Stone and his

family, central figures in the upstate New York commune, is, by turns, painful and joyful, beautiful and excruciatingly difficult. Life within "Arcadia" is so well described, in fact, it seems as though one can smell the very detritus of life in such a well-intentioned but hardscrabble existence.

We see all of this through the eyes of Bit, the first youngster born into the commune, who grows to adolescence amid the free-thinking members of the group. He sees it all, growing up in the face life's sharp edges — the rigors of birth, the struggles of the addicted — and its simple joys.

But the insularity of this community looms as large as a character itself, and, as Bit grows, he begins both to anticipate and to dread life on The Outside.

When that day comes, he eventually finds himself confronting evils overwhelming to even the most hardened among us.

What a wonderful book. Groff's writing envelops the reader, casting us headlong into the world she has created for Bit, attaching us to him from the earliest age, engaging us in his growth, his struggles, and his eventual decision to seek a kind of redemption for the community itself.

This is Groff's second book. Can't wait to read her third.

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LibraryThing member mjlivi

A beautifully written book, telling the story of Bit, a baby born in an upstate New York hippie commune in the 1960s. The book tracks the rise and fall of Arcadia, which grows from a tiny, freezing community of like-minded beatniks to a two-thousand strong counter-cultural hub that eventually

collapses under egos, permissiveness, drugs and sex. Alongside this broader story you get the story of Bit, growing up with rose-tinted memories of Arcadia and trying to make his way in the wider world. There's so much richness to this book, both at a language level and at the level of the story. It's slow-paced, but it's worth the time you spend on it.

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LibraryThing member ccayne

Loved it although not at first. Bit is such a sympathetic character as he moves from a potential utopia in the commune where he was reared to the dystopia of 2018 America. Writing is wonderful.

LibraryThing member KatyBee

This excellent novel has both beautiful writing and a fascinating story with characters that live and breath in the reader's mind... It was easy to get caught up with this book that is told from the view of a tiny boy named Bit, raised in the heaven/hell of an idealistic hippie commune of the 60's

called Arcadia.
Bit's story stretches all the way from his earliest childhood memories, through his adolescence and a rough entrance into the regular world after the disintegration of the commune, and then on through the joys/fears of becoming a father, being abandoned by his wife (a fellow former commune child), and the agony of watching his hippie parents get old...and the story even stretches on into the near future of 2018 with global warming and viral epidemics.
In the hands of a lesser writer, this would never work but Lauren Groff is just that good. She especially shines in bringing to life all the population of Arcadia, the flawed musician leader Handy, the Kid Herd, the Naturists, the burnt-out Trippies, the Hens (pregnant girls), the goon squad, the midwives, and so on...both the strong and beautiful but also the crash 'n burns.
Her talent lies in the details - - in lovely, perfect descriptions of nature or golden moments of time, or in gray dusty layers of abandonment and ruin and the desperate blackness of depression. In one section, she describes an old, lost cemetery like this: "...Stones stick out of the snow-burned grass, and Bit thinks of Astrid's teeth, the way they are haphazard and yellow. He sits to gather himself, and finds his fingers tracing words carved in the stones. 'Minerva' one says. 'Whose Name Is Writ In Air. 1857, another says. A tiny one, a milk tooth, says simply, 'Breathed once, then lost.' " Just a small thing, describing a tiny gravestone as a milk tooth, but so indelible.
Very highly recommended.

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LibraryThing member sturlington

I'm afraid that once again, I am the dissenting voice of the reviews. This seems to happen to me a lot, but I will just offer my observations, and you can take them as you will.

I received this book for the Early Reviewers program, and I was eager to read it. Unfortunately, once I started it, I had

to keep forcing myself to return to it. This is not a relationship I want to have with a book that I am reading for pleasure.

While I think Lauren Groff is an excellent writer, I find her style off-putting. For one thing, she doesn't use quotation marks, an admitted pet peeve of mine that I think has become far too trendy among young writers. But even more than that, I found the sheer preciousness of the first chapters, set on a 60s-era commune, to be a real turn-off. The cutesy nicknames (Kid Herd, Henhouse), the precocious point-of-view character, and the lack of any person I felt I could relate to kept me from really engaging with this book.

I finally admitted to myself that there are many more things I would rather read. Maybe I will return to this novel again someday. Maybe not. But count me in the minority of readers who was not charmed by this book.

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LibraryThing member sunqueen

This was an excellent read. Bit, the narrator of this story, begins his tale when he is just a very young boy. It was interesting to see the progression of events as told from his POV, gaining sophistication and increased understanding as he grew up in the commune.

LibraryThing member hairball

Arcadia is, quite simply, a really amazing novel. It follows its protagonist, Bit, from the semi-aware days of his toddlerhood in a commune to his middle age during the decline of civilization.

The portions of the book dealing with Bit's childhood and adolescence are the most compelling. The way

Groff deals with Bit's increasing awareness of what's going on around him, his mental puzzle-assembling, feels just right. Bit's internal adolescent mayhem is externalized by the disintegration of the commune in the hands of the adults who are too preoccupied to parent their offspring--and, indeed, aren't necessarily encouraged to do so by the tenets of communal living.

Bit faces disintegration for the remainder of his life--there's never any center for him to hold on to, it seems, so he strives to be that center for everyone else. I'm making the book sound unremittingly bleak, but it isn't--although it certainly won't make you laugh out loud (unless, perhaps, you grew up in a commune).

(The scene in which Bit goes out with someone who praises Ayn Rand over dinner, and later finds himself unable to kiss her because of it, manages to be both amusing and trite.)

Readers who are looking for another Monsters of Templeton won't find it here. Readers looking for one of the first really masterful books of the year, however, should be well-pleased.

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