Arcadia - Hardcover

Lauren Groff

3.71

24,636 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0434019623 ISBN 13: 9780434019625

Publisher: William Heinemann, 2012

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Product Description 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. About the Author Lauren Groff was born in Cooperstown, New York. She has a BA from Amherst College and an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and has won fellowships to the Vermont Studio Center and Yaddo. Her debut novel, The Monsters of Templeton, was a New York Times bestseller and was shortlisted for the Orange Broadband Award for New Writers 2008. She lives in Gainesville, Florida.

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About the Author:

Lauren Groff was born in Cooperstown, New York. She has a BA from Amherst College and an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and has won fellowships to the Vermont Studio Center and Yaddo. Her debut novel, The Monsters of Templeton, was a New York Times bestseller and was shortlisted for the Orange Broadband Award for New Writers 2008. She lives in Gainesville, Florida.

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

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