An interesting, very different book from what I expected. It's gotten great reviews, rightly so. Set mostly on an upstate New York commune, of 700 acres, in the late 1970's, we follow the lives of the a group of hippies or idealists, depending on your definition, who set up a commune of equality and freedom, a haven from the world of wars, capitalism and avarice. Abe and Hannah, two of the founding members, led by the charismatic but dogmatic leader, Handy, have a child named Bit, who becomes the novel's protagonist. We see Bit grow up at the agrarian utopia until it falls apart, when he becomes a teenager. But in his formative years, it becomes a utopia for him, during his childhood and innocence, isolated from the friction around him, both familial and communal. He becomes fast friends with other children, especially Helle, the daughter of Handy, the leader. Unlike Bit, Helle sees through much of the pretense, breaks the rules, indulges in drugs and sex, the lifestyle in a sense of the adults around her. Nevertheless, Bit adores her, overlooks her faults and falls in love with her as an adolescent.
He, more than any of his mates, buys into the whole happy hippy thing, the communal sharing, the emphasis on people, the lack of commercialism, the shared tasks, the dining hall, with its tempeh, tofu, and yogurt. He loves the outdoors, the freedom to wander and play with the other kids, the beauty of the area, all the things that make it an ideal place to grow up if you are Bit. Unfortunately, most of the others want more, wish they lived elsewhere, and when things fall apart, most are happy to take up another kind of life. Arcadia, after all, is not a very easy life; the community was always short of money, often of food, and chores were often shared unequally, creating tension and anger. The idea was good; the practicality of it was bad. The reason: "Freedom or community, community or freedom. One must decide the way one wants to live...why can't you have both? You want both, you are destined to fail. Too much freedom it rots things in communities, quick. That was the problem with Arcadia (268)"
After the fall, we jump ahead to Bit's later years; he lives in the city, works at a university, as a teacher of photography and for a few years, he seems happy. Helle, the girl from his childhood reappears in his life, they have a daughter, and all seems fine. Until Bit wakes up one day and Helle has left, never to return. Bit longs for Arcadia, for the life he led back in Arcadia, and of course, for Helle, his idealism unsullied.
We jump ten more years into the future. His mother Hannah, his father Abe have returned to Arcadia, built a house and live on the grounds though it has changed. Helle has never returned. Hannah is diagnosed with ALS and both she and her husband Abe attempt suicide. Abe dies but Hannah, ironically, survives. Bit and his daughter, Grete, leave the city and come to live with Hannah during her last months, helping her as she slowly disintegrates. This section of the novel seemed a bit long for me. The last forty or fifty pages are taken up with Hannah's dying, Bit's attempts to reconnect with her, and Grete's anger at having to leave her high school and her grandmother's terribly slow death. Bit does, however, discover himself, reconciles with his mother, her ways and her love for him, and ends up falling in love, towards the end, with Ellis, the doctor who comes to help take care of his mother. For some reason, during these last few months, a plague has appeared around the world, called SARI, threatening the planet, its inhabitants. Fortunately, when Hannah finally dies, the plague also disappears, with fewer deaths than expected, and Bit, Grete, and Ellis, we assume, live together with some happiness. And Bit finds what he is looking for. a lesson for all of us:
"Peace, he knows, can be shattered in a million variations: great visions of the end, a rain of ash, a disease on the wind, a blast in the distance, the sun dying like a kerosene lamp clicked off. And in smaller ways: an overheard remark, his daughter's sour mood his own body faltering. There's no use in anticipating the mode. He will wait for the hushed spaces in life, for Ellis's snore in the dark, for Grete's stealth kiss, for the warm light inside the gallery, his images on the wall broken beyond beauty into blisters and fragments, returning in the eye to beauty again. The voices of women at night on the street, laughing; he has always loved the voice of women. Pay attention, he thinks. Not to grand gestures, but to the passing breath (289)." Lovely.
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