Arcadia [Hardcover]

Lauren Groff (Author)

Book Description

Release date: March 13, 2012

From the bestselling author of The Monsters of Templeton comes a lyrical and gripping story of a great American dream.

In the fields of western New York State in the 1970s, a few dozen idealists set out to live off the land, founding what would become a commune centered on the grounds of a decaying mansion called Arcadia House. Arcadia follows this romantic, rollicking, and tragic utopian dream from its hopeful start through its heyday and after.

Arcadia's inhabitants include Handy, a musician and the group's charismatic leader; Astrid, a midwife; Abe, a master carpenter; Hannah, a baker and historian; and Abe and Hannah's only child, the book's protagonist, Bit, who is born soon after the commune is created.

While Arcadia rises and falls, Bit, too, ages and changes. If he remains in love with the peaceful agrarian life in Arcadia and deeply attached to its residents--including Handy and Astrid's lithe and deeply troubled daughter, Helle--how can Bit become his own man? How will he make his way through life and the world outside of Arcadia where he must eventually live?

With Arcadia, her first novel since her lauded debut, The Monsters of Templeton, Lauren Groff establishes herself not only as one of the most gifted young fiction writers at work today but also as one of our most accomplished literary artists.

Praise for Arcadia:

"[Lauren Groff] has taken a quaint, easily caricatured community and given it true universality...And a book that might have been small, dated and insular winds up feeling timeless and vast...The raw beauty of Ms. Groff's prose is one of the best things about Arcadia. But it is by no means this book's only kind of splendor."
--Janet Maslin, The New York Times

"Groff's beautiful prose make this an unforgettable read."
--Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

"I was constantly torn between wanting to gulp down this book or savor its lines. Even the most incidental details vibrate with life... Arcadia wends a harrowing path back to a fragile, lovely place you can believe in."
--Ron Charles, The Washington Post

"****"
--People

"A moving look at the value of human connection in a scary, chaotic world."
--Entertainment Weekly

"Lauren Groff's dazzling new novel brings the flawed visions of a '60s commune to life... At a moment when so much floating anger struggles for articulation, it's Groff's essential human empathy that gives her work its urgency."
--Vogue

"One of our best young novelists brings a lost Eden of hippiedom freshly to life... Groff's prismatic prose style lends itself to the darker currents that run beneath the Arcadian dream... both poetic and ambitious."
--Elle

"[A] beautifully crafted novel... [it] gives full rein to [Groff's] formidable descriptive powers, as she summons both the beauty of striving for perfection and the inevitable devastation of failing so miserably to achieve it."
--STARRED Booklist

"An astonishing novel, both in ambition and achievement."
--STARRED Kirkus Reviews

"Arcadia feels true, as do the characters who populate this extraordinary novel."
--Hannah Tinti, author of The Good Thief

"It's not possible to write any better without showing off."
--Richard Russo, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Empire Falls

"Groff is one of our most talented writers, and Arcadia one of the most revelatory, magical, and ambitious novels I've read in years."
--Kate Walbert, author of the New York Times bestselling novel A Short History of Women

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*Starred Review* This beautifully crafted novel follows Bit Stone, the first child to be born in the late 1960s on an upstate New York commune called Arcadia, from childhood through the year 2018. An introspective youngster who can often go months without speaking, Bit “watches life from a distance.” He can see how hard his parents work to make Arcadia successful, but he can also see that the self-indulgent commune leader frequently fails to live up to his own ideals. As the backbreaking work, continual poverty, and near-constant hunger work to undermine the once-flourishing sense of community, Bit’s family leaves the commune to make their way in the outside world. Bit becomes a photographer and teacher but is always anchored to the place of his childhood, even marrying the emotionally damaged daughter of Arcadia’s guru, but happiness proves elusive, both for him and for the greater world, as a flu pandemic sweeps the globe. Groff’s second novel, after the well-received The Monsters of Templeton (2008), gives full rein to her formidable descriptive powers, as she summons both the beauty of striving for perfection and the inevitable devastation of failing so miserably to achieve it. --Joanne Wilkinson

Review

"Richly peopled and ambitious and oh, so lovely, Lauren Groff's Arcadia is one of the most moving and satisfying novels I've read in a long time. It's not possible to write any better without showing off." -- Richard Russo "Part Stone Diaries, part Lord of the Flies, part something out of a Shakespearean tragedy, Lauren Groff's Arcadia is so uniquely absorbing that you finish it as if waking from a dream. Groff is one of our most talented writers, and Arcadia one of the most revelatory, magical and ambitious novels I've read in years." -- Kate Walbert, Author Of The New York Times Book Review's 10 Best Books Of The Year, The New York Times Bestselling Novel A Short History Of Women "'Arcadia swings gently between moments of pure happiness and exquisitely described melancholy ... beautiful prose ... Arcadia the commune may have been an experiment in a new way of living but Arcadia the book explores several lifestyles, without the need for the reader to blister their hands weeding a soy patch. Arcadia is smart, beautiful, rooted in an earthy and glorious location. Read it and consider your place in the world and the people you love, but mostly read it for its beauty. Groff's beautifully written Arcadia paints a lyrical picture ... You fall in love with Arcadia's protagonist, Bit, and find yourself transported to a different time, place and lifestyle.'" Stylist 5 stars "Lauren Groff's Arcadia is so immersed in the life of a hippie commune that patchouli ought to waft off its pages.Ms. Groff has taken a quaint, easily caricatured community and given it true universality, not just the knee-jerk kind that Arcadian platitudes espoused. Even more unexpectedly, she has expanded this period piece so that it stretches from 1965 to 2018, coaxing forth a remarkable amount of suspense from the way her characters change over time. And a book that might have been small, dated and insular winds up feeling timeless and vast. The raw beauty of Ms. Groff's prose is one of the best things about Arcadia. But it is by no means this book's only kind of splendour.Arcadia is stunningly sensual and visceral in describing behaviour straight out of a time capsule.A shimmering evocation of the commune's heyday. Even allowing for Ms. Groff's extraordinarily rich imagination, she writes about this life as if she has known it." New York Times "With Arcadia, Groff has woven her own tale, in eloquent prose that's rich in sense of place and depth of feeling" -- Holly Williams Independent on Sunday --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Voice; First Edition edition (March 13, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1401340873
• ISBN-13: 978-1401340872
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 1 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (166 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #259,997 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Lauren Groff was born in 1978 in Cooperstown, N.Y. She graduated from Amherst College and has an MFA in fiction from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her short stories have appeared in a number of journals, including the New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, One Story, and Subtropics, and in the anthologies Best American Short Stories 2007 and Best American Short Stories 2010, Pushcart Prize XXXII, and Best New American Voices 2008. A story will be included in the 2012 edition of PEN/ O. Henry Prize Stories. She was awarded the Axton Fellowship in Fiction at the University of Louisville, and has had residencies and fellowships at Yaddo, Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, and Ragdale.

Lauren's first novel, The Monsters of Templeton, published in February 2008, was a New York Times and Booksense bestseller, and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for New Writers. Her second book, Delicate Edible Birds, is a collection of stories. Her second novel, Arcadia, will be out in March 2012.

She lives in Gainesville, Florida with her husband and two sons. Her website is www.laurengroff.com

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 40 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Breathtaking March 24, 2012

By Jayne

Format:Hardcover

I haven't read a novel this involving and moving in a very long time. It's so good that I don't even want to say much about it; it stands on its own, as its own statement. I will say that for me the most impressive thing about the book is its vision. Spanning 40 years or so, it holds a taut center line, so that no matter where the characters go or what they do, the line keeps them in a defined orbit around the core of the book.

Lauren Groff is more than 20 years younger than I am. As I write this, I'm about the same age as the main character in the last third or so of the book. It's almost miraculous to me that someone who hasn't yet reached this age can so accurately peg the combination of nostalgia, bitterness, and regret of looking back at childhood, living in the present, and being uncertain about the future. There's more than a whiff of Peter Pan and Never Never Land in the story, and I mean that in a good way. On top of that achievement, Groff has also constructed a perfectly convincing bridge from a time most of her readers clearly remember to a time we can only imagine.

This is a quiet novel, without drama and histrionics. It's also highly literate and intelligent. Read it. You'll be glad you did.

42 of 46 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Life in a Commune April 3, 2012

By J. Ehrlich

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I enjoyed it immensely and the writing was lyrical and lovely. I would recommend this book.
I lived in a commune from the age of 17 to almost 30, so I have to add that fact to my review of Arcadia. I will tell you my thoughts, and they are sort of jumbled together, so it's not a "good" or a "bad".... First, the NAMES for things were soooo reminiscent for me! We had a Home Place (Arcadia is the fictional Homeplace). Our Hatchery was Arcadia's "Pink Palace" for where the babies were born. The Monkey Crew (ours was the Construction Crew) ... "Inside" versus "Outside"... I could go on and on. Basically, we had our own language, and so this fact of Arcadia was astoundingly reminiscent and immensely enjoyable.

I believe it is human nature to rebel against what you know, so I had a hard time buying into Bit's unwavering love and loyalty for Arcadia. All the kids that had been born in my particular commune hated living there with a passion. They hated being different, and they couldn't wait to be old enough to bolt. Of course, now that they're older, they do appreciate the sense of family that existed, plus the fact that they have so many brothers and sisters throughout their lives.

I had a hard time with the author's timing of things. Knowing a thing or two about communes, I didn't buy that Arcadia was going strong while Ronald Reagan was in office (circa early '80's). That was after Jonestown. I believe the concept of the hippie commune was on the wane during that time. And the non-self-sustaining issue was also hard to swallow. For a real commune to exist for so long, they would have had to be way more organized than Arcadia was. The book describes Hannah as being pissed off or depressed a lot of the time because there was no money and no food. No one would put up with that for that long, they'd just leave and go back to reality. Way too many freeloaders/hangers-on were depicted -- I know it doesn't work that way. Everyone has to pull their weight, and then some.

The fictional illness toward the end was just silly and served no purpose whatsoever. I felt the author lost her way with this story line.

Still -- an entertaining read that managed to capture a lot of the love/hate, push/pull and sheer physical discomfort -- alternating with occasional blips of ecstacy -- of communal life.

55 of 62 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars I'd give it ten stars if I could. March 13, 2012

By Leda D. Schubert

Format:Hardcover

I received an advance copy of ARCADIA and have been waiting impatiently for the pub date so I can post a few thoughts (not that anyone's been waiting to hear from me). ARCADIA is a stunning novel. Look elsewhere for a plot summary--I can't do it justice.

The imagery Groff uses on page after page took my breath away--and by the last third or so, I was weeping. Here is the very stuff of life. Hope, dreams, love, how to live, lost hope, lost dreams, lost love, death. Bit, the protagonist, is beautifully crafted and will break your heart.

It's a gorgeous book. I can't stop thinking about it. I'm going to read it again. Writers know that the most particular and specific may also be the most universal. Nevertheless, sometimes a book comes along that you think has been written just for you. ARCADIA is like that. If you care about the world, buy a copy.