Arcadia, (Paperback)

from 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...

from 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 ...

from 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 Yo...

from 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. De...

from 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 bar...