{"id":15866,"date":"2012-05-11T08:00:40","date_gmt":"2012-05-11T13:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs2.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/?p=15866"},"modified":"2012-05-02T09:32:29","modified_gmt":"2012-05-02T14:32:29","slug":"arcadia-by-lauren-groff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/arcadia-by-lauren-groff\/","title":{"rendered":"Arcadia by Lauren Groff"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Arcadia<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/em>by Lauren Groff\u00a0chronicles the rise and fall of a 1970s commune in upstate New York.\u00a0 While living in makeshift homes, a group of idealists\u00a0calling themselves The Free People work together to renovate an old mansion where\u00a0hundreds could coexist in harmony, sharing equally in manual labor and production of food.\u00a0 Though it was started by people looking for a life of freedom, equality, and communal living, it becomes clear over time that this\u00a0utopian society\u00a0isn’t all that was promised and dreamed of.\u00a0 People are often just cold and starving, but they keep waiting for life in Arcadia to get better at the\u00a0encouragement of their charismatic but ultimately\u00a0hypocritical leader.<\/p>\n

We learn about Arcadia through the eyes of a five-year-old\u00a0boy named Bit, the first child born in the commune.\u00a0 Bit lives in a bread truck with his hard-working father Abe and his deeply depressed mother Hannah, who was a ray of light in Arcadia until her miscarriage caused her to see Arcadia as it really was.\u00a0 Despite his age Bit is an astute observer of the good times and bad in Arcadia, and so his childlike lens is perfect for introducing this society.\u00a0 The story moves through the ups and downs of Arcadia’s history, visiting Bit and catching up on his life and the livelihood of the Arcadians when Bit is 5, 15, 35, and 50 years old.<\/p>\n

My favorite thing about this book was Lauren Groff’s lovely prose.\u00a0 She makes it easy to become fully immersed in the world of Arcadia through the lush detail.\u00a0 Even the\u00a0parts of the story that could easily come off sounding like cliches (everyone is vegan, the women wear flowing dresses and braids, plenty of illegal drugs are consumed) somehow transcend\u00a0this because Groff’s rich writing and realistic characters keep this novel from turning into a series 1970s cliches.<\/p>\n

Once I really got into this book, I couldn’t put it down.\u00a0 The characters were so compelling and real that I just had to know what would happen to Bit, Abe, Hannah, and Arcadia itself.\u00a0 Though I had a good idea of how things would turn out, the last quarter of the book took me to some unexpected places.\u00a0 Overall I highly recommend this book, especially if you’re interested in historical fiction or 1970s culture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Arcadia\u00a0by Lauren Groff\u00a0chronicles the rise and fall of a 1970s commune in upstate New York.\u00a0 While living in makeshift homes, a group of idealists\u00a0calling themselves The Free People work together to renovate an old mansion where\u00a0hundreds could coexist in harmony, sharing equally in manual labor and production of food.\u00a0 Though[Read more]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10,8],"tags":[1964,476,1965],"class_list":["post-15866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-staff-picks","tag-communes","tag-family-drama","tag-hippies"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd0CXx-47U","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15866"}],"version-history":[{"count":39,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15944,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15866\/revisions\/15944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}