It's world-building of a quality which you find in the very best of science fiction. I'd no need either for a map - I could walk the paths, swim in the pond and move through the various buildings. The world of Arcadia is perfectly-imagined and played out on the page with little explanation and no need for it. I glanced at the cover and the sprite-like child said 'fantasy' - it was chance which made me look more closely, but once I did, I was hooked. It's a constantly-mutating background to Bit's life, which is rich in parental love but poverty-stricken and mal-nourished in others.
Some sexual partnerships are stable and exclusive, but many are not. In other circumstances you might call her wayward but the commune has its own laws and has regard to 'what shouldn't be against the law', such as growing drugs for sale. The children form a tight group but Bit is drawn to Helle, the troubled daughter of Handy and Astrid. He's known no other - and it's a pull which will stay with him throughout his life. Bit is aware of the tensions but he's deeply happy in the agrarian life of the community. There's a little bit of an edge between Abe and Handy, a musician and the group's initial, charismatic leader, but much of it is smoothed out by Astrid, a midwife and Handy's wife. He's the son of Hannah, a baker for the commune and Abe, a master carpenter and the driving force behind the renovation of Arcadia House. That sounds rather like a history, but we see the story through the eyes of Bit, the tiny boy born soon after the commune was created.
We see the commune and the people who made it through the early, hard-working days to its precarious peak and into its inevitable decline. Power corrupted, personalities changed and commitment waivered.
In the early days the renovation of the house and the funding of the commune was hopeful, energising - the American dream encapsulated in bricks, crops and hard work - but as with many, if not most, such enterprises it was not to last. Highly recommended.īack in the seventies a group of idealists (well, hippies) founded a commune in the grounds of Arcadia House, a decaying mansion in western New York State. The writing, the characters, the location are excellent and I WANT to read it again.
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