Arcadia by Lauren Groff

 

The 1970's were the Decade of Love.  All over the world, young people flocked to rallies and communes, sure that they were creating a brave new world based on love and naturalness.  Handy was one such man.  He was a singer and somehow managed to acquire the title to a deserted mansion and land in upper New York.  On it, he and his band of insiders create Arcadia.

Arcadia is to be the place where all can live and be free.  There is a dairy, a bakery, a laundry and greenhouses.  There is a nursery for the youngest children and a barracks for the older kids.  Handy's wife is Astrid who is a midwife.  The other founding couple is Abe and Hannah.  Abe is a master carpenter and renovates the mansion to be the main house for all.  The couple has one son, a boy called Bit.

But paradise is hard to sustain.  There is little money coming in and food is sometimes hard to come by.  Politics start to arise with cliques forming and soon there are those who come to live with no expectation that they will work and give back.  Eventually the commune falls apart, the inhabitants disappearing into the nights.

Twenty years later, Bit is a photography instructor.  He has married Helle, who is Handy and Astrid's daughter and their friends are the kids they grew up with on the commune.  No matter how far away they are living they all keep up with each other and are there for each other.  Bit and Helle have a daughter, Grete, and Bit feels that his life is complete.  But life isn't like that.  Several life disasters send him back to Arcadia to oversee his parents' aging needs.  

This is a beautiful book.  Groff is an amazing writer and I'd read anything she wrote.  She understands the desperation that lives all seem to encounter and the basic truth that our lives are enriched by love and kindness.  Horrible things happen to her characters just as horrible things happen to many of us but she gives hope that things will follow a natural path and that the good outweighs the bad.  This book is recommended for readers of literary fiction.