There were times in the midst of reading Arcadia by Lauren Groff where I thought to myself, “I would totally love to live in a commune.” But then I would close the cover of the book and remember that I’m an angry hermit.

It’s not that Groff paints the commune as a halcyon of hippiedom, in fact it’s anything but. And yet, it’s still compelling. Arcadia is the dwelling spot of the “Free People” led by a charismatic singer named Handy. The group settles on a plot of land one of their trust-funded members gets for cheap off his dad, and set up a kind of hippie shanty town before they renovate the dilapidated mansion that will house them all.
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