Customer Reviews

Lost and Found: My Life in a Group Marriage Commune (CounterCulture series)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Tom Wolfe meets Margaret Mead -- in the first person. From inside the head, body and soul. Evocative and familiar. Sexualy revealing and honest. A piece of the 60s told in the most intimate and reflective of voices. One word to this author, "MORE!"

very interesting first person account of a young woman who spent a short time [several weeks (?)] living in one of the many short lived 60s communes. Based on my personal experience living in groups, it gives a very realistic picture of the confusion of the new person trying to understand the rules and gain acceptance, and the inevitable discovery that things aren't as rosy as they were presented to the outside.

The book is quite short, generally well written, although there is a fair amount of what one might consider 'filler'.

This is the most fascinating book I've read in years. Though structured around one pivotal event in the author's life -- her experience in a utopian commune -- any moment or facet of her life as a whole can come up in the telling at any time, in vivid synchronicity. As an impassioned personal quest (the "Lost" aspect), the story breathlessly sweeps you forward like a thriller. But as "Found"ness, the book also has blissful built-in non-linearity and can be read the way one reads the I Ching -- jumping in anywhere. (As a matter of fact, the Ching itself keeps popping up throughout the story.) One reviewer has said "You don't want this book to end", and that's true, but luckily it doesn't have to end.

Hollenbach has an astonishing ability to get the cadences of natural speech onto the printed page. This is one of the great pleasures of the book: The characters and the protagonist-narrator herself speak so livingly off the page it can be almost eerie.

"Lost and Found" is a rich, profound, enlightening book.

I was intrigued by the book's title as I had personal experience with group marriage and communal living, back in the day. The book was disappointing though. The writing wasn't great, but that would have been OK if the content was better. I found the author surprisingly unsympathetic, in spite of the book being her own story. She really never wanted to be where she was and only dabbled in the experiences described. A few months in the '70s... could be enough to influence your direction in life, but hardly gets your feet wet. What was going on in the group sounds fairly typical of the open-ended communal households of that era, but calling it group marriage seems a misnomer; it was your basic free love ideology, without commitment. It would have been more interesting to get some depth of background, people, character, beliefs, but the narrative doesn't really take you beyond the author's own ambivalent feelings.