Arcadia by Lauren Groff
My rating: 4/5 cats
i had reservations about this book because, well, look at that cover. fucking hippies.
but i should have known that lauren groff would write a spectacular book even if it was about fucking hippies. i have read all three of her books now, and while monsters of templeton is still far and away the winner in the “books by lauren groff” award ceremonies, this one is very very good.
this novel focuses on bit, a child born into a hippie commune, and checks in with him during four periods in his life.
when he is born, he is just a tiny little thing: she wrapped you around and around with a thick wool scarf and went to the grocer’s and weighed you. you were three pounds, exactly. the size of an itty-bitty butternut squash.
hence, bit.
bit is initially believed by many members of the community to be defective because of his size and because he doesn’t speak for several years.
when he is six:
He wakes three times per night, desolate for his mother. At last, he writes a note to Sweetie. He labors over it with a red pencil.
Im to little. It says. I have to sleep with Abe and Hannah.
When he hands it to Sweetie, she goes speechless. You can read? she says.
Sweetie gives the note to Hannah, whose lips form an O.
Oh, Bit, you can write? she says. She kneels to his height and kisses him.
but bit is not unintelligent, he is just watching. he watches a man die, he watches his mother slip into her winter depressions, he watches the community in its triumphs and failures.
and through his eyes, there is so much beauty. the story is told in brief episodes that build upon each other to give a sense of how this particular dynamic operates. there is an undercurrent of what will eventually break the utopia running throughout,its gentle hypocrisies and conflicting personalities, but through bit’s eyes, we see a loving extended family, who work together for a common purpose, where children run wild and free, and nothing is shocking. as much as i disdain the hippie lifestyle, it becomes truly beautiful in her descriptions; human lives stripped down to the essentials. bit is a character filled with love and wonder, who is shaped by the hippie ideals into not a sex and drug-crazed stereotype, but a loving caregiver who wants to protect these fragile people he sees around him.
the second part is about the breaking up of the community, and bit’s life in the “real world”. the beginning of this segment shows just how a project like this can get out of control. as its numbers grow, and under the “leadership” of a man with messianic leanings, everything begins to break down. the ideology that once held the community together weakens as newer members join up for the free love and drugs, there is resentment about the distribution of labor, and too many mouths to feed. it gets ugly pretty quickly, and eventually, the authorities descend and everyone has to go their separate ways, even helle, the girl bit loves and hates, is disappointed in and excited by in equal measure.
What Bit hated most in all the Outside world, hated with an irrational, puking hatred, was the goldfish in the pet store a street away, its endless dull slide around the glass. When he passed the store on his way to school, he crossed the street. He was afraid of himself, of how badly he wanted to smash his fist through the window, to cradle the fish in his bloody hands and carry it down to the river. There he would dip it to the surface and free it into the terrible cold water. It might have been swallowed in a second, a sudden jagged mouth out of the black. But at least that second it would feel on its body a living sweetness, a water that it hadn’t dirtied with its own dying body.
bit is still consumed with his need to protect those around him, and has really only traded one fishbowl for another. his mother is still sad, his father has suffered an accident, and his upbringing has made him different from other kids. he turns to photography, another way of watching and capturing what he sees, and retreats into silence once more.
i don’t want to say much about the third and fourth parts of the story, because it would give too much away about the characters and where they find themselves. but yes, “finding themselves” is a pretty major theme. there are some really heartbreaking and beautiful scenes, one of which involves bit and helle, where she explains to bit just how much he missed when he was supposedly watching; how his perception of his early life is flawed:
View Spoiler »there is so much damage in this story. so many idealistic intentions, so many mistakes. and to see where the characters end up, after the scattering of the commune; there are some unexpected consequences of having shared that specific formative experience, and each will take something different from it into their adult decisions.
there is one intentionally-dropped thread that i kept waiting to come back into the story. i mean, it probably took great writerly restraint to let it go, and it was probably for the best, but eeerrrggghhh!! closure! i long for closure!
but, yeah. really lovely book, and it shows that hippies are people, too! some of them, anyway. in books.
