Arcadia by Lauren Groff

I found this book interesting because while it starts with an historical realism (it sounds like the bildungsroman of a boy growing up in a hippy commune in the seventies), it moves forward in time to a future world, made increasingly uninhabitable by global warming and spreading epidemic disease. Or you could say that it moves from one distopia (we see the dream of a commune crumbling, crushed by the pressures of too many people, outward society--the police, and not enough money) to another (an apocalyptic vision of our future). Indeed, the second distopia is more disturbing than the first; for the realism of the first part of the book implies that we are headed for the second with little hope of reprieve. Despite the problems the world faces in the second part of the book, however, and looming personal problems for our protagonist (his wife has disappeared, his teenage daughter is a teenager, and his mother suffers from a slowly debilitating disease), we see the strength of the human spirit in the face of adversity. I didn't like this book as well as Monsters of Templeton, but it did give me a lot to think about.