Arcadia by Lauren Groff: A review

Do you ever have the experience of starting to read a new book and after a few pages you feel as if you've stepped through the looking glass into an alternative universe? And once you've stepped through, you feel like you never want to go back again? That was the way I felt about this book. It had me from the first sentence, "The women in the river, singing." And it didn't let go until that last paragraph:

"He sits. He lets the afternoon sink in. The sweetness of the soil rises to him. A squirrel scolds from high in a tree. The city is still far away, full of good people going home. In this moment that blooms and fades as it passes, he is enough, and all is well in the world."

All has not been well in the world for quite a while as this story ends in the dystopian landscape of pandemics and global warming run amok in 2018. But the story didn't start there.

It started back in the mid 1960s in idyllic upstate New York as a group of idealistic hippies agree to form a commune which they call Arcadia. It is their effort to achieve a utopian society.

As the group comes to the land where Arcadia will be founded, new life is already coming to their group. The first baby born at Arcadia is the son of Abraham and Hannah Stone, surely two of the most loving parents ever described in fiction. The child is a son who is named Ridley but who is forever known as "Bit," as in "Little Bit of a Hippie." He weighs only three pounds at birth and will be small all of his life.

The story of Arcadia unfolds through Bit's eyes. We meet him at five years old. He sees and absorbs everything, although there is much he is unable to understand. What he doesn't know, we as readers also do not know at first. We grow in understanding as Bit grows, through his childhood, into his teenage years.

When Bit is fourteen, it all falls apart. The center can no longer hold at Arcadia. He and his parents leave for the city where he grows to adulthood and where he loses contact for a while with the friends of his youth. But slowly, drawn by the magnet of their common experiences, they drift back together again. The adult Bit winds up with the girl he loved as a child and they have a daughter together.

All of this unfolds bit-by-bit (Pun intended!) in Lauren Groff's lyrical prose. A summary of the action is very prosaic in the telling, but reading it is a luminous experience. She has skillfully drawn us into the mind of Bit and in the raw beauty of her writing, she has taken a community that might have been easily caricatured and has endowed it instead with a kind of universality, with truths that we can all recognize, regardless of our backgrounds.

Moreover, as she expands her story to reach from 1965 all the way to 2018, she manages to imbue the tale with suspense and a rather surprising timelessness. It's not just a small and dated tale of some crazy 1960s hippies. Bit is Everyman, and, for that matter, Everywoman, too. We feel his pain and his joy. We know something of the depression which robs him of his power to act and, also, of the courage that makes him get off his knees and try again. And again.

It really is quite a remarkable read. I was looking at the "Notable Books of 2012" article in The New York Times earlier this week and saw that this was one of the books listed, and I thought, "Oh, yeah, I still have that book on my 'to be read' shelf." I decided it would be the next book I read. Good decision!

Poetry Sunday: Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver

How about we share another Mary Oliver poem? After all, you can never have too many of those. In this one, the poet seems to acknowledge that it is often hard to simply live in and enjoy the moment, perhaps because we are afraid it can't last. She urges us to give in to that moment and fully experience the joy. Although "much can never be redeemed, still, life has some possibility left." Don't Hesitate by Mary Oliver If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is no...

Poetry Sunday: Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney

My mother was a farm wife and a prodigious canner. She canned fruit and vegetables from the garden, even occasionally meat. But the best thing that she canned, in my opinion, was blackberry jam. Even as I type those words my mouth waters! Of course, before she could make that jam, somebody had to pick the blackberries. And that somebody was quite often named Dorothy. I think Seamus Heaney might have spent some time among the briars plucking those delicious black fruits as well, so he would have known that "Once off the bush the fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour." They don't keep; you have to get that jam made in a hurry! Blackberry-Picking by Seamus Heaney Late August, given heavy rain and sun For a full week, the blackberries would ripen. At first, just one, a glossy purple clot Among others, red, green, hard as a knot. You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust ...

Poetry Sunday: Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman

You probably remember poet Amanda Gorman from her appearance at the inauguration of President Biden. She read her poem "The Hill We Climb" on that occasion. After the senseless slaughter in Uvalde this week, she was inspired to write another poem which was published in The New York Times. It seemed perfect for the occasion and so I stole it in order to feature it here, just in case you didn't get a chance to read it in the Times . Hymn for the Hurting by Amanda Gorman Everything hurts, Our hearts shadowed and strange, Minds made muddied and mute. We carry tragedy, terrifying and true. And yet none of it is new; We knew it as home, As horror, As heritage. Even our children Cannot be children, Cannot be. Everything hurts. It’s a hard time to be alive, And even harder to stay that way. We’re burdened to live out these days, While at the same time, blessed to outlive them. This alarm is how we know We must be altered — That we must differ or die, That we must triumph or try. ...

The Nature of Things

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