Book Review - Arcadia by Lauren Groff


There are times when I start to read a novel and by the first sentence I am completely hooked, reluctant to put it down and always thinking about the next moment that I will have a free minute so that I can pick it up again and continue to read the story. There are other times when I read a few pages and lose interest, dropping it down on the pile of books on my nightstand, sometimes going back to it on another day, other times just leaving it there until it makes it's way back into one of my book cases. And then there are the times that I start a book, and have a little trouble in the beginning, but keep at it, because I know deep down that it is going to be a gem of a story, one that will hold onto my heart for a long time. Arcadia by Lauren Groff falls into the latter category.

Set in three different periods of time, Arcadia follows little Bit's life, from when he is born into a commune named Arcadia in the late 60's, through his early 30's in New York City and then finally back in Arcadia in his 50's. Born to Abe, a pillar of the Arcadian community, and Hannah, strong and beautiful but prone to bouts of debilitating depression, the only life Bit knows until his early teens is that of Arcadia. A commune based on utopia ideals that works and then falls apart, where everyone works together to create a place where the rules of the outside world are not needed in order to survive. Where music and love and hard work create a home where happiness is meant to be prevalent, and politics, hypocrisy and hatred are non-existent. Arcadia works well in a confined place with a small amount of inhabitants but once it becomes popular the population grows and grows, and the ideals inevitably start to crumble. We see Arcadia through Bit's eyes and hear it's music through Bit's ears, we become part of his life, ask the same questions as him, love his friends the way he loves them and fall in love with the troubled Helle, the girl and then woman who occupies his heart even when he doesn't want her to, when he does. When Arcadia falls apart Abe and Hannah decide to take their son out into the world, before they are crushed by the consequences, and Bit has to learn how to live as most people live, away from the protection of the commune and from the freedom he always knew.

Groff's prose is absolutely beautiful. Her descriptions of Arcadia are stunning and so realistic you can only imagine being there; however, it is the way that she portrays love, heartbreak and pure sadness that really hit me in the stomach. We all know these feelings all too well, but when the prose you are reading actually makes you feel the exact emotions the main character is feeling, down to the very core, something special happens. It's as if it releases something inside of you, a mixture of pure sadness and the realization that you have touched something very beautiful and very clear. I hope that one day my own writing can create the same type of feeling in others, because there is something so incredible about how this type of writing continues to make you feel, days after you have finished the book. Groff has an amazing talent, and I hope she continues to create such wonderful stories for us.

Arcadia is not only a terrific story in itself, it is also, in my opinion, a stunning piece of literature.

Lauren Groff's Website

Ramblings: (R)Evolution

I’ve been obsessed with the show Revolution this month. The end of the world/major changes in life/dystopian and utopian views on life themes are often recurring in my writing and I like to imagine what life would be like without all of the comforts that we are used to, and without all of the elements that we take for granted every day (hot water, electricity, public transport and so on). The whole point of this show is to portray life 15 years after a never-ending black out that is completely widespread around the world. Without electricity everything falls apart and has to be rebuilt again. Or does it actually get rebuilt?


Can you imagine not being able to travel anywhere unless you it can be done on foot or by horseback? Or not being able to contact anyone via any form of mail or phone anymore? Basically imagine going right back to the Middle Ages, but even worse as there are not even ships to travel over the seas with, because they have all been destroyed by militias, or used for firewood. The loss of hundreds of years of evolution, to fall right back into a time that we have only read about in history books. Of course, the show itself is a little far-fetched, and it is made by the same guy who was in charge of bringing us Lost, but at the same time it gets me thinking. What if this really happened?

How many times has the end of the world been predicted, down to a specific date, just to go by and not happen? We have another one coming up very soon, in just a couple of weeks, and I doubt that anything will happen. At the same time I feel like many people I know, including myself, have been going through some strange transition phases at the moment, phases that is full of gloom and problems and sadness, that seem to trap you and pull you down like quicksand on a stormy beach right before a hurricane hits. The positive in me says that everything will get better and that we just need to push through the cold and make it back to the warmth again. Then the negative says that it’s never going to get any better so we had better just lie in bed and never get out from under the covers again. The positive is finally winning on the negative though, I find it impossible to stay down for too long, as there is some kind of invisible force from within that shoves me back out into the world and puts a smile on my face. Anyway, how can you help others who have it worse than you when you can’t see past your own troubles?

I’ve always been interested (maybe obsessed is a better word…) in revolution and uprising. Rebellion against what you feel is forced upon you and the idea of making a change for the better. Not that the better always happens, as so many human beings are too selfish and hell bent on gaining power over others in reality, but the idea that it exists makes me happy. I suppose that’s how I have always tried to live my life – by what I think is right. Although I suppose what I think is right may not be what you think is right, and if you were a fundamentally bad person then I would have to get rid of you. Or something along those lines. In any case, I digress. Back to the subject at hand, that of the world as we know it changing in such a way that we have to change our lives completely in order to live in it. What if all of a sudden the lights do go out without any warning, never to come back on again? What would your first reaction be? Disbelief? Straight into survival mode? Would you help others or just focus on your own well-being and safety? It’s impossible to really know until you are actually right there in the situation, but it’s way to interesting a thought to not speculate on how we would all survive. However, I can’t really imagine not being able to contact my family and friends who are far away ever again. That thought is too hard to fathom and too scary to even contemplate. But I do like to think about the rest of it… Where would I go, how would I find my friends, and what would I take with me if I left the city? Do you just leave everything behind and start over somewhere new, a new person in a new world? How would I live without being able to listen to music everyday anymore, or know what was going on elsewhere in the world, or even the next city down? There are so many stories to be written about these types of situations, stories that I should start writing down instead of keeping in my head. Maybe on paper instead of online though, come to think of it… At the very moment that I am writing this our internet decided to go down and won’t come back up again, which I find a little spooky, even if I know it probably has no connection whatsoever. Another thought comes to mind… Do we often imagine these end of the world scenarios just because we want something different but can’t find a way to make a change? Is it really impossible to make changes on a smaller level, instead of waiting for the world to explode (or implode for that matter), to rebuild what we have wanted to change forever? We always talk about remembering events of the past so that they never happen again, how about predicting them so that they never actually happen? Interesting concept, one for another post as it is time to make vegetable stew and mashed potatoes while I still can in the confines of my kitchen within the haven I call home. 

The main question that remains is… If all this really does happen where shall we all meet so that we don’t lose each other? Orchard St? 


Short story: Autumn's Place


Autumn’s Place

There is a place not too far away from here where the sun always shines and the sky is always blue. At night the moon rises through a clear dark sky speckled with a million stars, all flickering away to some kind of galactic symphony. During the day the birds sing in harmony and at night the fireflies float around in the air, humming along to their own songs. Once in a while voices can be heard across the bay, but most of the time all you can hear are your own thoughts. If you close your eyes and clear your mind you can imagine this special place not too far away from here.

Autumn dreamt of this place when she wasn’t there. It was her haven away from the real world, her spot in the world where she felt like she really existed. Two days of real existence cancelled out the other five days of the week where she felt like she was just another ant building up the ant hill. Alarm clock to work to lunch to smoke break to work to gym to dinner to bed to alarm clock again. The boring cycle of the week days made her want to randomly kick things while screaming until her throat was hoarse. But once Friday came along, she would grab her weekend bag and hop on the subway, knowing full well that within the following 12 hours she would taste freedom again.

The air felt so pure and fresh that Autumn would let it fill her lungs as soon as she stepped off the train. Rain or shine, summer or winter, she would try to never miss a weekend away. There was nothing that the city had to offer her than millions of people, emails clamouring for her attention and a small, box-like apartment where she could never feel at home. Out in the special place she had as much space as she needed, more space than she would ever need. The deer would run across the lawn, chomping on the hyacinth flowers in bloom, and the raccoon babies would hole up beneath the ceiling rafters, keeping warm until they were big enough to venture outside alone, ready to attack the garbage cans that lay around for them to choose from.

On Saturday mornings, during any season, be the roads frosty or glistening with ice, or the air so humid with heat that one felt like one was drinking airdrops, Autumn would rise before the sun and walk down to the bay to watch it slowly come up over the water to the east. The sky would turn purple and then orange and yellow, bruised streaks lining over your head, until it looked like the sky would alight upon the bay, throwing fire onto the water, before the sun broke through the horizon and another sunny day would start. In the evening, she would rush over to the west bay and watch the sun set on the water again, sometimes over fishermen and swimmers, other times over blocks and blocks of ice that were floating about. Even during the winter months the sun rays were piercing and strong, as if nothing could beat the power it had over the place. It was clear that nature ruled the place that had captured Autumn’s heart and had given her the freedom that she needed so much to make it through the week days of her life.

Autumn had chosen a life of compromise: if she had the weekend of her choice she would endure the other five days of the week. She felt that she had no other choice than compromise. There were no shades in her black or white, it was prison and escape and back to prison again. She lacked the imagination or the will-power to make her freedom an everyday occurrence. By accepting what she saw as her fate she gave up on seeking for anything more in life. 

Saturday nights were for lighting the log fire and curling up on the couch with the dog and a book. Dinners would be fresh vegetables cooked into soups and stews and salads over the stove, herbs picked from the garden and tea made from lemongrass and honey. Produce was always purchased locally, from the farmers, or picked directly from the vegetable garden amidst the hibiscus flowers. Autumn’s choice of a book was so very eclectic, but she would always finish at least one during the weekend, another form of escape. Escape within escape, so that what was considered by most to be her real life was completely forgotten for hours on end. What was real life anyway? The job that she hated and that took up most of her days, but that paid the bills and allowed for short getaways, or the life in her place by the bay, away from everything and everyone, where dreams could be dreamt without any guilty feelings?

Autumn would walk down to the ocean on Sundays, never mind the season or the weather, to sit by the waves and watch them crash against the shore. The ocean made her feel serene and energetic at the same time, and helped her collect her thoughts and her doubts together, and make sense of them. There is nothing more powerful than the ocean – it will pick you up and throw you about without fail, and will take anything in that you throw into it, swallowing it whole and throwing it back up miles and miles away, somewhere else in the world. Some things never come back up, they are swallowed forever, and disappear into the earth. Autumn would imagine all of her fears disappearing into the darkest parts of the ocean where no one would ever think of looking for them. Or maybe they were swallowed up by a shark and shredded into a million pieces, never to be found again. Every week new fears and doubts were thrown into the waves, some disappearing, others coming back again, weeks later.

Whereas the ocean was the beginning of all feelings of freedom for Autumn, it also ended up being the end of it for her. Autumn’s life was divided into boxes, all enclosed by one big box; a small box for her city prison, a bigger box for her free life and tunnel boxes that lead the way to both boxes. There was no sign of a tunnel to go outside of the biggest box, it was one that Autumn had forgotten to build for herself. There was no outside, there was just the city and the special place, just a train ride away. A week day life and a weekend life, nothing else, carefully built so that nothing ever felt out of place. Even her freedom was built to last only parallel with the prison life. The ocean would take and take from her, but it would also give her back something that she had not even tried to imagine existed anymore: something outside of all of this.

One Saturday night, on a rare night when Autumn found herself stuck in the office, working on a project that needed to be finished before Monday morning, the rain started to fall. And fall, and fall, and fall. By Monday the rivers had washed up over the borders, and were racing through the lower parts of the city, picking up cars and debris and trailing them along the streets. Television showed scenes of chaotic winds, trees falling and electricity pylons rooted up from the ground, leaving thousands and thousands stranded without power and water. On Tuesday the storm dissipated and the sky became blue again, washed clean of the anger nature had unleashed on the country. Whereas the city had weathered some damage that would take time to fix, Autumn’s special place had been reclaimed by the ocean. Where she had once walked and ran with the dog, watched the sun rise and set, read books and picked flowers, were now only fish and waves and the odd roof and boat floating about before it was dragged into the midst of the ocean. The special place was somewhere down there, among the fears and doubts that Autumn had sent into the water. The ocean had taken Autumn’s self-created freedom but had thrown her something back: the ability to make a choice and a change in her own creation. Instead of living in the self-contained box for the rest of her life, content but not happy, she now had the choice of breaking free. It was now up to her to make this choice.

When one thing disappears another thing is not far behind to take its place.


Ramblings: Of utopia and dystopia and other random thoughts

In addition to reading a lot of poetry lately, I've also been craving a lot of end-of-the-world, beginning of the next world, paradise is not quite paradise, dystopian-style stories. Utopian thoughts are all cool and everything, but I have a lot of trouble imagining the perfect society where everyone and everything follows some kind of unwritten rules of perfection. Can we really believe that one day every single human who is on this planet will decide to treat everyone else as equals, never hurt anyone else, and never lie, cheat or try to better themselves by oppressing others? No. This is why this is called Utopia. Perfection doesn't exist. We are all flawed and will continue to be flawed. I can live my life treating everyone in the way I would want to be treated myself, but that doesn't mean that everyone else is going to decide to do the same. All of a sudden just because the world as we know it is going to end.
There has been talk of the end of the world coming soon for years now. We missed it in 1999. Last year the Rapture was supposed to happen. It may have, but it went by unnoticed because I suppose that most of us were not worthy of being raptured. Now the end of the world is supposed to be happening again this year. People are really preparing for it (I kid you not, I know someone who is collecting tins of food and making evacuation and survival plans for him and his family). All I could imagine when he was telling me this were scenes from Zombieland. He also told me that I was pretty much fucked because I lived on an island with 8 million other people and it would be pure chaos when it all started. I don't know what "IT all" is in his mind but I'm not getting too overly worried about it right now. All I have been thinking about in terms of survival mode is that I should probably start stocking up on bottles of Jameson and packets of Marlboro Lights, because I am sure they will be worth tons of money once people can't get them easily anymore. That's it, I shall continue to sell liquor to people to make a living in the midst of a world of destruction and despair. Smart, no?

So, this book I am currently reading, America Pacifica by Anna North, is based on the idea that the world was going through the second Ice Age, and that a small group of people (small being proportionate to the size of the world population at the time) were able to escape the ice and the perpetual freezing temperatures by fleeing to an island in the Pacific, and making a new home there. What should have been a new life for this group of people becomes a mini-replica of the US, governed by a dictator. There are those who live as rich and healthy in the nice areas of the island, called Manhattanville, while others struggle to survive in the slums of Little Los Angeles. Proper food is scarce for those who cannot afford it, and they live off fake cheese and jelly fish products. The main character, Darcy, was born on the island, and knows nothing of life beforehand. For her, this is life. But through-out the development of the plot she starts to discover what life was really like before the ice destroyed everything, and she begins to question the set-up of the society that she has always taken for granted. I haven't finished the book yet, so I don't know if it ends in a lighter note than it started in. We will see.

This society could be anywhere really - it's not too far-fetched if you think about it. There will always be those who just live, accepting that this is life, others who will question, and those who will actually stand up and try to make a change. There will always be those who are more well off, and those who have to fight every day to just survive. I just find it really interesting to read fiction that is so near to reality that it could be real. One day in the near future this may be us, stuck on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, wondering if all those people we used to know made it off the mainland, or managed to survive despite all odds. I really want to write an end of the worldesque story right now, but I don't actually know where to start. Maybe with the stockpiling of Jameson and Marlboro Lights...

On a more lighter (and happier note), I finished a compilation of poems written between the early 2000's and last week. If you want to read them you will have to ask me and I will email them. I can't post them on here, they are just too personal and raw. And I lack the confidence to do that. I also got offered a new job, working right next door to my other job. It's pretty much perfect and I'm really really happy about it. More about all that when I have actually started working there. I also bumped into an old friend who I hadn't spoken to in months, sorted out our differences and realised how much I had missed her. This has been a pretty wonderful summer so far, even if the end of the world is (apparently) nigh.