RICHARD RUSSO Pulitzer Prize-winning author of EMPIRE FALLS. It’s not possible to write any better without showing off. ”Because…no matter how he strains his brain, he cannot imagine the greater world at all. 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. ”He cannot imagine himself in the Outside,” Groff writes. Bit, who’s never even glimpsed the world beyond his isolated home, suddenly confronts an unfathomable reality: He’s about to leave. But then the story jumps forward nine years, and the commune - battered by conflicting egos and a swell of clueless newbies - starts to disintegrate. I truly enjoyed every minute of this luminous, offbeat and lovely book. I was moved by the tragedies and losses but felt uplifted by the kindness and connections of the characters. Bit is 5 when we meet him, and the tribe is similarly wide-eyed and fresh. Split between utopia and its aftermath, the book’s second half tracks the ways in which Bit, now an adult (he’s 50 when this all ends, in 2018), has been shaped by Arcadia a career in. Lauren Groff's language is beautiful and I found myself underlining sentences and phrases. Daily Mail An exquisite tale of idealism and disintegration Utterly absorbing. Arcadia unfolds through the eyes of Bit Stone, the son of two of the collective’s founders. Powerful and affecting Captures a five-year-old’s consciousness with rare, almost mystical intensity, this is a vivid, original and generous-hearted book. They don’t believe in personal property and reject pet ownership because they consider it ”slavery.” But Groff beautifully captures the lives of these deeply flawed ”Free People,” whose charismatic but spiritually bankrupt guru spearheads a utopian commune in upstate New York. They make their own soy cheese and bang along to Cat Stevens songs on bongos. But it is by no means this books only kind of splendor.' -Janet Maslin, The New York Times 'Even the most incidental details vibrate with life Arcadia wends a harrowing path back to a fragile, lovely place you can believe in.

The hippie dropouts at the center of Lauren Groff’s new novel, Arcadia, would be easy to laugh at. Groffs prose is one of the best things about Arcadia.

Arcadia lauren groff book review