![]() ![]() ![]() The vision of Arcadia is a world removed from outside influences, but as such utopian experiments are wont to do, it eventually descends into complete chaos. Its inhabitants call themselves the “Free People,” and led by the charismatic but deeply flawed Handy, they dutifully recite mantras of yoga, organic produce, and equality. Groff’s portrayal of Arcadia borders more on a cult than a happy-go-lucky land of hippies. Through beautiful language that grounds the story in its natural landscape along with its focus on personal relationships, “Arcadia” forms a haunting and hopeful vision of love lost and gained. Bit, who is as meek and passive as his name suggests, observes his strange world first through the eyes of a child and then, as the novel progresses, through the jaded and wounded perspective of a man in an increasingly confounding world. “We were like guests at the Mad Hatter’s table,” reflects one character in “Arcadia,” “but didn’t even know the world was flipped around.” In her second novel, author Lauren Groff traces the backwards and unusual life of Bit Stone, the child of hippies who help found the commune Arcadia in rural New York in the 1960s. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |