Hippies! Soy cheese! Fermented apple booze with acid in it! White dresses! Upstate New York, which is actually a chillier version of Mayberry!

Sooo the book is about Bit, a little boy growing up in a hippie commune in the '70s. There's a charming, erratic, hilarious and heart-wrenching cast of characters. The commune falls apart (as communes are wont to do) and we then follow Bit into the Outer World, and into adulthood and fatherhood.

It's slow going, mmkay? The whole focus here is on slowing down and SEEING the world around you (not subtly, Bit ends up a photographer), so the book is mostly snapshots, episodic glimpses into moments of DEEP THINGS. The writing is simple (not in a Hemingway-way, though, much less masculine) and clear.

My only issue was that the last section is in the near-ish future, with society feeling the effects of over-crowding and everyone operating with e-readers and whatnot...it's fine, but it smelled VEERRRY similar to the last portion of A VISIT FROM THE GOON SQUAD. But the rest of the book was good enough for me to forgive that.