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Arcadia  By  cover art

Arcadia

By: Lauren Groff
Narrated by: Andrew Garman
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Publisher's summary

Lauren Groff’s acclaimed debut novel The Monsters of Templeton was short-listed for the Orange Prize. Her second novel, Arcadia opens in the late 1960s with a group of young idealists forming a commune in western New York State. Into this group is born Bit, who grows into a quiet, distant man. Over the course of 50 years, Bit witnesses the utopia crumble and the world change in unimaginable ways.

©2012 Lauren Groff (P)2012 Recorded Books, LLC

Critic reviews

“Richly peopled and ambitious… is one of the most moving and satisfying novels I’ve read in a long time.” (Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author)

What listeners say about Arcadia

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Luscious prose, intimate and realistic

With luscious prose Lauren Groff tells the story of Bit, a boy born in the late 1960’s on a VW bus in a snowstorm in Wyoming, as his parents and their communal caravan drive across the U.S. to settle in upstate New York. The community they found soon after his birth, Arcadia, is Bit’s complete world for his first 15 years. Bit’s experiences of poverty, hunger, cold and isolation are presented with intimacy and unsparing realism. But so too are his experiences of love, acceptance, joy in nature and discovery.

“Arcadia” movingly presents the emotional and physical experiences of Bit and his friends, as well as those of the adults of the community, when the inevitable “crisis” occurs that leads to the disintegration of the group and the exodus of most of its members, including Bit and the other children. The story of Bit’s radically different adult life is the second half of the novel. Groff does an excellent job portraying him in his later years in a way that is wholly consistent, and utterly believable, given the child we have come to know so intimately in the earlier part of the book.

I found the reading by Andrew Garman a bit flat at first. However, his understated and undramatic way of reading allowed the beautiful writing to shine through on its own. I never tired of listening to this book, and found that his voice slipped quietly into the background, so that I might have been reading it on the written page rather than listening to it.

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19 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Wonderful novel

I thought this was a terrific novel--a clear story line with layers of tales under the surface. It spans decades, from the '60s to the not too distant future, and left me contemplating my own future in a new light.

The novel is really beautifully written, the language rich enough to drown in. The characters, with their inevitable flaws, are developed sympathetically. Arcadia is the story of a boy who grows up away from the "real world," in a gigantic commune, where pot, poverty, and extravagant dreams and hopes are constants, and what happens when, inevitably, he must join the rest of the human race.

My criterion for narration is simple: a clear, modulated voice that doesn't overpower the music of the words themselves, as the author wrote them. I had no complaints with this novel.

I wish I had it to read over again--and of course I do, and I will!

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8 people found this helpful

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Wonderful book!

I thought this book was amazing. It was a beautiful evocation of a time and of politics that are gone. I thought the characters were well drawn and brought to life with the great narration of Andrew Garman. Lauren Groff's writing is so terrific to listen to. I recommend this wholeheartedly.

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5 people found this helpful

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    3 out of 5 stars
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3.78 stars

There’s nothing special about this story. It would have been better with a different narrator. This guy sounds like a robot much of the time. I finished the book,but it didn’t really do it for me.

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2 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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down Alice's rabbithole...

I loved the main character of this novel - Bit's inner world took me in. I also loved the storytelling - both within the novel as a character itself, and the storytelling of the novel. The writing was wonderful and the book was sensuous and evocative. I enjoyed his sensitivity and his insistence on clinging to his sensate experience of the world. The book spans the years from hippie commune life through an apocalyptic now, which I appreciated. And the relationship between parents and children, particularly mothers and sons was poignant for me. Lastly, I loved the allusions to Grimm's fairy tales - it made me wish I knew them better. Overall, a great read!

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    2 out of 5 stars
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Tedious

Despite the amount of details in this book, I just never got drawn into the characters. I preferred the second half of the book, but it still felt one-dimensional. I stuck it out to the end, but if felt a bit like work to finish this one.

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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Can't wait for the end

Lauren Groff does not short change you, you are not left wondering what happens to the characters in her books, she will give you every last detail, even when you have long ago stopped csring. She does not think one's later years are anything but sad and petty. That people have no relevance once they have passed a certain stage in life.

While I did find that effective in Fates and Furies, this effort leaves me wishing her outlook on life would widen and she could perhaps produce characters with more depth. Nevertheless I enjoyed the hippie commune.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Close to home

Any additional comments?

I am about the age of main characters parents, and also "experimented" with communal living as well as a lot of other facets of this story. I had a deep fear that I was to have a child and raise him/her in that environment that it would be akin to child neglect. ie-bringing up a child in such an unrealistic world...without real healthcare sketchy vegan diet...I could go on, but you know what I mean. I always knew I was just 'playing' at being a 'peacenik', altho the principles are engrained in me even now. This book and story truely resonated with me personally that is to say. The development is a little slow to take off, Until I realized it was being told thru the voice of a young 'hippie' child. Then it made sense to me, and I became Bit. So well written I empathized with him completely. Didnt want the story to stop. The narrator is awesome. Simple perfect.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    2 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Dreary, made more so by the narrator

What would have made Arcadia better?

The narrator sounded like a depressed robot.

What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)

couldn't finish it

What didn’t you like about Andrew Garman’s performance?

monotone, never changed character's voices, no enthusiasm for the story-made it sound almost apocalyptic and it wasn't

You didn’t love this book... but did it have any redeeming qualities?

yes, it was probably very well written but it was so sad and I've read the lost hippie stories before-this wasn't one of the better ones.

Any additional comments?

I will listen to samples very carefully before I purchase

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Didn't dive it as I did with Monsters of Templeton

Any additional comments?

I just couldn't get into this book. I read almost half of it and kept wishing that I was at the end. I loved her other book--The Monsters of Templeton--but the subject of the book, a hippy commune, just didn't keep me interested. And the very small boy who is the main character kept making me think of Owen Meany. So I set this book aside.

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