“Arcadia”
By Lauren Groff (Voice, $25.99)
Lauren Groff’s second novel, “Arcadia,” is so tenderly moving it actually swells the heart. The fates should be lauded for assigning the author Cooperstown, N.Y., as her hometown, for she’s drawn two exceptional novels from the terrain of upstate New York, including her first, the highly original “The Monsters of Templeton.”
Groff hangs her story about a utopian commune in the 1970s on one of its youngest members, little boy Bit, or more formally, Ridley Sorrel Stone. It’s such a dignified name for a child who will grow up in squalor, the emotional and physical refuse created by hippie idealists who retreat from the world to live off the land with no idea of how to till it.
Their leader, the musician Handy, rules by charisma. Bit’s parents, the strong-bodied carpenter Abe and his pillowy wife Hannah, are the boy's strength and comfort even as his mother succumbs to an enveloping depression. There is magic in the natural beauty of their surroundings, a kindly witch of woman who lives deep in the forest, and the love of two good people to shape Bit’s sequestered childhood.
But not every child of the commune shared this wealth. Helle, Handy’s daughter, later details her bitterness. “It was cold. We never had enough clothes... Everywhere smelled like spunk. Handy let me drink the acid Slap-Apple when I was like 5. What kind of hallucinations does a 5-year-old have? For two months, I saw snakes coming out of my mother's mouth every time she talked.”
Bit is 14 when his parents load the car to make their getaway. The commune’s numbers have swollen beyond containment with runaways and drifters with no intention of contributing to the common good. A police raid signals the beginning of the end. His mother wakes him in the night “Baby,” she murmurs in his ear, “Grab your things.”
We meet Bit again as a grown man, abandoned by his wife — Helle, whom he has loved life long — to raise their daughter, Grete. For years he fruitlessly searches for her, but now the man who grew up as one amongst so many is profoundly alone. His return to Arcadia comes when his father, a squatter on the land in a Mission-style cabin he built himself, dies. His mother, afflicted by ALS, must be cared for.
The novel’s one false note intrudes as the story wends its way to conclusion. A SARS epidemic is sweeping the globe and thousands upon thousands are dying. Meant to represent the world threat that can seep across any threshold, it’s an awkward device. We already get that Bit, Grete and Hannah and their small community have succeeded where the commune failed by loving each other in sickness and health, from both strength and weakness. The real family, rather than the idealized one, triumphs.
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