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    Drop City
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    Drop City
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    Drop City
    Audiobook18 hours

    Drop City

    Written by T.C. Boyle

    Narrated by Richard Poe

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    The best-selling, PEN-Faulkner award-winning author of The Tortilla Curtain, T.C. Boyle is hailed as "America's most imaginative contemporary novelist" (Newsweek). In 1970 a California commune pulls up stakes and moves to the harsh interior of Alaska. The members establish Drop City, a back-to-the-land town, on a foundation of peace and free love. But their idealism cannot prevent tension from rippling through the group. The results are anything but predictable in this honest, surprising evocation of a time period and its enduring beliefs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books Audio
    Release dateFeb 6, 2008
    ISBN9781449803001
    Unavailable
    Drop City
    Author

    T.C. Boyle

    T.C. Boyle is an American novelist and short-story writer. Since the mid-1970s, he has published eighteen novels and twelve collections of short stories. He won the PEN/Faulkner Award in 1988 for his third novel, World’s End, and the Prix Médicis étranger (France) in 1995 for The Tortilla Curtain. His novel Drop City was a finalist for the 2003 National Book Award. Most recently, he has been the recipient of the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award, the Henry David Thoreau Prize, and the Jonathan Swift Prize for satire. He is a Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Southern California and lives in Santa Barbara.

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    Reviews for Drop City

    4/5

    657 ratings27 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Boyle is always entertaining - what I found most interesting about this story was the juxtaposition between the wrongheaded hippie idealism that was already fading in the 70s and the hardened survivalists eking out an existence in the Alaskan bush. The drugged-out free-lovers and commune denizens are pretty easy targets, but in the end Boyle's point is that there are good and bad folks in every community, and that hard work and respect for others are the main things that divide them.
    • 3/5
      Set in 1970, this novel focuses on two seemingly very different communities, which in reality share common traits. The eponymous , Drop City, is a hippy commune set on forty-seven acres in sunny California; the other, Boynton, is in the remote Alaskan hinterland.Initially the two societies appear to be decidedly distinct. Drop City, made up of hippies and draft dodgers, is a place to be free of societies' moral constraints, where free love and drug-taking is endemic, where 'chilled' generally means lazy. In contrast the inhabitants of Boynton, face an almost daily uphill struggle just to stay alive, a place where self-discipline means survival but when the police threaten to close down the original Drop City, its inhabitants, led by there guru-like leader Norm, decamp to the outskirts of Boynton with the intention of establishing a new settlement, out of reach of the authorities and living off the land. Living cheek by jowl and faced with months of cold and darkness stretching ahead it soon becomes apparent that the two communities actually share a number of similarities. In particular, both are riven by internal discord. For the hippies petty jealousies gets in the way of the much vaunted sexual freedom and challenges their 'peace and love' ideals. Meanwhile a jealous, murderous feud is taking place between two of Boynton's inhabitants Sess Harder and Joe Bosky. The commune's open-doors policy results in a sudden influx of new arrivals which causes tensions in the commune and the town. Both communities appear permanently poised on the precipice of catastrophe, man-made or natural. Personally I found the Californian section of this novel somewhat aimless, lacking a real sense of direction, and the book wasn't really working until the two communities were merged. Only by bringing them together do we see what the author is really trying to say. That if you strip away the hippies' free love philosophy then there is little to separate them and the backwoodsmen, both are retreating from the conventions of society. This, I found it amusing, also seemed somewhat simplistic, because whilst the hippies had a choice the locals didn't. I found this an interesting insight into the drop-out culture of the 60's and early 70's but as Star, the main female hippy character, and her lover Marco eventually comes to realise their 'freedom' isn't without costs and not as radical as they supposed. I found it hard to like any of the hippy characters who were shallow and fickle, they purported to want nothing to do with society yet were happy to take hand-outs from it. In contrast I came to admire, Sess Harder and his wife Pamela, in their attempts to carve out a life for themselves. However, for me the main weakness in this novel is that it lacked any real sense of struggle. I never really felt that any of the characters were ever in real jeopardy, there were differences but they weren't fully explored and as a result, the climax, when it comes, was rather disappointing. On the whole I enjoyed the author's writing style and the book contains some amusing episodes, the genital crabs spring to mind, but I never really believed that he had any real idea what he was trying to achieve. Therefore, an OK read with some interesting ideas but one that could have been better.
    • 3/5
      Late 60s, early 70s. A commune of sorts, Drop City, in Northern California and then Alaska. The "guru", Norm, is a 30-40ish guy who owns property and thus can host this group.These folks are proud of being hippies, proud of being "free", proud of their (supposed) lack of hangups around sex and drugs. And there is a lot of both, as most of the members just d whatever whenever. Only some of the women and a few of the men do 80% of the work or more. And they know it, for the most part.The first half of this book was OK. When they went to Alaska, though, it was more of the same, only in -40 degree weather. Which just seems soooo impossible when there are no roads and you need a boat or snow machine (they don't have one) to get to town. They got no game...what are the 18 that stay the winter eating?This book was just too long, and the wrapping up was really not satisfying to me.
    • 4/5
      T. C. Boyle is the author of eleven novels, including World’s End (winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award), Drop City (a New York Times bestseller and finalist for the National Book Award). I read World's End and now Drop City which I actually owed the longest of the two books. I liked World's End a lot but this one took a long time to get into. The book published in 2003 is set in the late sixties and is a story of the hippie generation. Upon searching drop city I find that there really was a Drop City that was established by artists but it was in Colorado. There were similarities in the difficulties the fictional Drop City of California experienced to that in Colorado. I was a young person during this era but never really a hippy and not into free love or drug culture. I liked the book much better when the group goes north to Boynton, Alaska to establish Drop City North and where they really learn what it means to live off the land. I did not like most of these people. My favorites were the Alaskan couple Sess and Pamela. Of t he hippies, I liked Star and Marco the most but just a bit more than the rest. I did have hope in them. I hated the way the hippies just threw their trash and had no disregard for nature and lived in a continuous drug fogged world, never washing. Sex, called free, in the era is not ever free. There is always consequences for all choices one makes.
    • 5/5
      Thoroughly enjoyable tale of a 1970's California hippie commune that relocates to the interior of Alaska...and meets its bush survivalist neighbors. This is a longish book but the plot moves along, the characters are vivid and (often) likable, and the writing is excellent. (Yes, there are drugs...and sex...because, hippies, duh.) T.C. Boyle is one of my favorite authors, and this book is a prime example of his genius.
    • 4/5
      I love Boyle's writing style and the way he paints a scene. Unfortunately, Drop City covered a topic I just wasn't interested in. Debauchery has never intrigued me so the prolific descriptions of free love and rampant drug use got a little boring. There were a few characters that I came to care about so that helped. Normally, if I don't enjoy a story I rate it lower but Boyle really is a gifted writer. 5 stars for the writing, 21/2 for the story.
    • 1/5
      A friend referenced this book. And I'd recently read about the book's namesake in this Aeon article. And I'm the child of hippies and intentional-community folks. So I thought it worth a read.

      My reception? Pretty negative.

      Summary

      A group of hippies in 1970 form an intentional community on a piece of land South of San Francisco. Simultaneously, we're made aware of a conservative redneck [I don't mean this term in a derogatory way] couple up in Alaska, "making it off the land." The hippies get kicked off their land in California and move in next to the rednecks up in Alaska. One of the hippies joins forces with the enemy of the redneck, and both enemies end up dying, after a lot of hardship due to them on the part of the hippies and the rednecks.

      Reception

      The book is extremely negative. When something can go wrong, it does. By the middle of the book I became paranoid, glancing around every corner, pondering what would be the next disaster. And I have to say, I actually got pretty good at predicting when and how things would go wrong.

      My guess is that our author, Boyle, is an atheist in the most pessimistic of ways. There is not one shred of beauty in the entire four-hundred and sixty four pages. Well, although there were many opportunities for beauty, our author missed all of them. From many perspectives, the book could be romantic - people living off the land, focused on community and relationships.

      Why do I say atheist? Because the book just leaves you wondering, am I just putzing around until I die? Does a human life have any real purpose or value at all? It seems our author has concluded, no, it does not. And although I won't lay out my viewpoints here, I will mention that I disagree with him. There's still some hope left in me, some humanity.

      There are some names dropped in the text which served some relevance to the generation. At the moment, those of G. I. Gurdjieff and John McLaughlin are coming to mind. So it's not as though Boyle just made up the entire book. Some aspects of the context aren't that far off base. But clearly, Boyle is not a hippy, nor is he a redneck.

      There are some nice aspects of the book. For example, we come to see that hippies and rednecks really care about the same thing. Ultimately, this could be said about any two subcultures. But it's nice to find this slightly inspiring message hidden under all of the doom and gloom.

      -

      Read my original post here.
    • 4/5
      I found T.C. Boyle's "Drop City" pretty entertaining, though I wonder what made it unique enough to include on the list of 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die. It was good, but not quite that good, if you know what I mean.Boyle's novel follows a group of hippies who lose their home in the California sunshine and decide to head to Alaska to live on the frontier. It's pretty much a disaster, as you'd expect. Though none was particularly likeable, Boyle's characters are well drawn and interesting enough that they really propel the story forward. Overall, this was just a lighter read than I expected.
    • 5/5
      Star and Marco are a beautifully drawn couple, proving that Boyle can write a romance as well as anyone, and this book is a hilarious send-up of hippie culture with all of its flaws and excesses.
      Many readers whose ideology is very compatible with this novel are probably put off by its cover in which nude people, lying face-down, make a crater in a lush-looking undergrowth. As the novel is the story of a failed commune, however, the cover is perfect.
      "Free love" doesn't work out so well in practice, especially for the very young, very pretty women (both of 'em), who get real choosy real fast. (When a virulent strain of crabs breaks out in the commune, it doesn't work out too well for the men either). Equally impracticable: staying high on drugs 24/7 and the actual labor required 24/7 for communal self-sufficiency. In spite of the high ideals of the brotherhood and much guitar strumming, some in the commune are more locust than brother: vicious sociopaths determined not to pull their own weight and to devour every human and natural resource. As for the leader of the commune--you'll have to read the novel. Suffice it to say he is never celibate, or hungry, or lacking in cash or abuseable substances.
      Boyle shows, in his inimitable ironic style, how the "establishment" gets "established", as our tree-house-dwelling young lovers are drawn inexorably toward parent-figures Sess and Pamela--and toward monogamy, sobriety (more or less), and the comfortable middle-class existence required to raise their babies and keep the locusts at bay.
    • 5/5
      Great description of Hippie life, interesting characters, good story about hippies meeting Alaskans, great writing.
    • 4/5
      I really wanted to like this more and upon pondering all of the novels I have read by T.C. Boyle thus far, I am kind of wondering if I just started out with the one that had the most interesting topic to me, Talk Talk. Suffice it to say, I'd rather read about the frustrating experience of being a deaf woman in America and having your identity stolen then a bunch of hippies who move from California to Alaska and their adventures. Boyle always does enough research and he recaptures the energy and the issues of that time both the anti war and the anti hippie sentiments, the irresponsible drug use, the racism that reared it's head more obviously than it does in our present day, the "free love," the lawlessness within the community, how things break down over time. Though, honestly, what TC Boyle does best above all is what he always does best, which is simply be a great writer. He's an incredible one and when he writes you can't help but be more interested in the story even if it isn't your thing.

      Well, this one isn't going to change your life. It isn't going to change your perception of the time, unless starting from a place of ignorance. If you like to read about this time period and if you appreciate great writing, you'll like the book. There's a rawness he captures and even a baseness in humanity that seems awfully realistic. Boyle shows his talent in the way he explores all kinds of people in his novels and how drastically different his full and shorter length stories can be.

      Some quotes I like:

      pg. 1 "The morning as a fish in a net, glistening and wriggling at the dead black border of her consciousness, but she'd never caught a fish in a net or on a hook either, so she couldn't really say if or how or why."

      pg. 30 "In the morning, which came hurtling out of the sky like a Russian missile aimed straight at his brain, Pan opened his eyes on the stiff tall grass and the golden seedheads dropping over him as if he were already dead and decomposing. "

      pg. 39 "Like Leda maybe, Leda all wrapped in feathered glory, Leda and the Swan. That had been her favorite poem in Lit class, and she'd read it over and over till it was part of her, all that turmoil and fatality spinning out of a single unguarded moment, and that was something, it was, but what made her face burn and her fingers tingle was the weirdness of the act itself. Picturing it. Dreaming it. The flapping of the wings, the smell, the violence."

      pg. 49 "...the county health inspector would have plenty to say and it wouldn't reflect a higher consciousness either."

      pg. 160 "It felt like the middle of the night, but it was light out, and for the life of her she couldn't have said whether it was dawn or dusk. The light had no source, direction-it just held, as gray and dense as water, and the limbs of the oak were suspended in it like the superstructure of a dream.:

      pg. 207 "When Pamela stepped in the door, there was nobody in the place, though it was ten 'clock in the morning and people were moving up and down the street outside like bloodclots working their slow way through the veins of the town."

      pg. 257 "Nothing's the way you picture it," Star said. "The mind creates its own reality, and how could the real and actual thing ever match that? It's like a movie compared to a cartoon."

      ...

      "Or a book," Maya said. "A book compared to a movie."

      pg. 315 "...because it would be nice to get a letter once in a while, to correspond, to reaffirm that there was a world out there beyond the cool drift of the river. As she went back up the hill with the laden plate the polar sun reached out and pinned her shadow to the ground."

      pg. 417 "The moon was a terrifically heavy thing as he crouched there beneath it-unsupportable, that moon, crushing..."

    • 4/5
      A tale of the 70's and the collission between free love drug using hippies and hard-drinking homesteading Alaskans and their survival through a harsh winter. T.C. leaves noone unscathed in this captivating story.
    • 1/5
      My First Review of this book:"Don't Even Bother"This is the most devilish account of life in a commune...not at all accurate! IS HE KIDDING ME! What this person (T.C. Boyle)reports about life in an intentional community, is so off that it makes me shudder. If you happen to have read it and found it to be a truthful account then I know you have never bothered to visit a "hippy" commune or ventured to live in one. It is utter ridiculousness. I found myself in a constant state of shock while reading what his sick imagination came up with for the daily goings on in a commune. If a writer has no idea what they are writing on, they need to take some time off from pumping out novella and get to a research course. I am still aggered and I grabbed this pulp fiction the minute I found out that it was about my clan. At least someone bothered to write on the subject, too bad he had absolutly no clue about his subject. Even the people he writes about in Alaska, wilderness men. all seem to be portrayed as thugs, and total drunkerds. Nice Mr. Boyle...the only two novels I have read of yours make me think that there is no hope for the world. Even the good guys are painted so UGLY. It just makes you want to give up. I am already somewhat worried about the way things seem to be going at times, you are no comfort, and lead the mind to some very dark speculation. Is it meant to shake a finger at the wrong-doers I think not, it occurs to me that you have a very low opinion of some fairly decent folks. The story of the commune has yet to be written. We should all take up our pens...those who have acutally lived it and those who have a finer mind. This work was almost indecent, in all of its inaccuracies. Rape of a child in the first chapters and feeding babies drugs soon thereafter. I just get sickened. Take a class in research Mr. Boyle... NOW... My latest review in amazon:I didn't enjoy reading this book, not because of any lack of imagination or talent on the part of the author. If you're into dismal fantasy, this is as good as it gets. The lack of reality, was a huge dissappointment. Coming from the perspective of one who has lived in a commune. I was actually enraged at times and spent the majority of my reading time trying to be objective about T.C.'s his lack of care of the people he was damning with this book. I read Tortilla Curtain after just ro see what sort of writer he was, I found him to have a nasty attitude, and while the story was compelling, he is a good writer...he appered to me to be a bigot and a falsifyer. His perspective is skewed in an unholy direction. Just my opinion. I cannot abide his foul take on things, though I can see his skill as a writer...which makes me dispise him even more. He will influence many with his persuasive intellect, and that worries me. He is angry and unforgiving, and it shows.
    • 5/5
      I have wanted to read T.C. Boyle and started this book on audio. Did about 2/3 that way and read the rest. Having come of age during that timeframe I can relate a lot to the subject matter. It also helps to be from San Francisco and familiar with Northern California. The writing was great. My only complaint was that it took way too long to get them up to Alaska. I thought the ending was tied up a little too cleanly. It does seem like a sequel could be written. It was only after I started reading this that I found out it had been a finalist for the National Book award. I can understand why. Great book!!!!
    • 5/5
      I just loved this book. The description of the California and Alaskan scenery is some of my favorite. This is my dream in life. To have been born in the 60's, living the hippie lifestyle. The whole communal living with its good and bad qualities, the music. I think I could have done without the free love though. The story is about a group of hippies living of the land in California who later move their commune up to Alaska because their guru's uncle left him some land up there. Mean time we follow the story of the residents of Boynton, Alaska; some of whom wind up being neighbors of the hippies. Both stories are very engaging and there are plenty of characters to follow. I would just love it if Boyle would follow this up with a continuing tale of these characters.
    • 5/5
      Last time I was looking for a book to read my girlfriend was watching a TV show about California hippies "living off the land" and some Alaskan lady and her son doing the same... whoever produced that must be a Boyle fan. It reminded me that I'd enjoyed this book the first time so I figured I'd give it a reread.Just as good the second time.Your usual Boyle fare... I just want to know what happens next!
    • 2/5
      Boring story!
    • 4/5
      This was a random, experimental book choice - it was on the 1001 Books list and I hadn't read any T.C. Boyle before so I mooched it as a trial balloon. It was certainly a satisfying read and I'm going to search out more of his novels after this.This book centres around two drastically different communities in the late 60s/early 70s hippy era: a commune in California and a bush community in Alaska living off trap lines and hunting trips. Boyle carefully sets up both of these communities as opposing ends of the same phenomenon - both, in their individual ways, are trying to drop out of a mainstream American society that they feel no fraternity with. However, that's where the similarity ends as these two are mirror images of each other. The commune may attract tourists and converts but its commitment to living off the land is laughable in comparison to the Alaskans, whose continued existence depends on it. It soon becomes clear that these communities are heading for a spectacular collision.There is an underlying irony; that the eponomous Drop City community, formed as a means of dropping out of society and living in harmony with the land, finds it impossible to do so despite the visible evidence that it is possible, provided by the Alaskans they live alongside. The longer Drop City remains in the Alaskan bush, the more this becomes a study of the decay and breakdown of a society under pressure created by the reality of living wild in Alaska. It is a symbolic representation of the disintegration of the dream the commune member have, the artificial, romanticised version of Alaskan life they have constructed in their minds. I have seen this book described in other reviews as a comment on the American Dream. If that is the case, then Boyle seems to have penned a fairly damning indictment of those who seek it, implying naivety and unrealistic expectations.It is a well-characterised and complex novel, certainly not just 'one of the crowd' of hippy novels this period continues to spawn. The question remains, is it a great book? For me, it was a very good book, competently executed, enjoyable and easy to read but it never really crossed the line to greatness. Possibly it suffered from the fact that I didn't really like any of the characters. There was certainly little that really stuck with me from this but it was enjoyable enough that, as I said earlier, I will read more from T.C. Boyle. An enjoyable read but not necessarily a 'must-read'.
    • 5/5
      The book begins in a commune in California in the late 1960s where a group of hippies of living out their ideals. But factions start to form in the commune and there is trouble with the authorities so they decide to move to Alaska where they hope they can be truly free. At the same time, a young woman moves to Alaska looking for a man to live with out in the wilds. The narrative changes perspective from the point of view of various characters over the its course. There is a sense of inevitability that things are going to go wrong with the communal living so it isn't the most original storyline, but the Alaska part adds an interesting dimension and you get a real sense of the hardships of these lifestyle choices.
    • 5/5
      T. C. Boyle is brilliant. Still regret missing seeing him give a reading. First book was Tortilla Curtain then on to Road to Wellville. Drop City turns my whole regret at not having been part of the hippie movement on its head. He's so good at getting right to the heart of the issue.
    • 5/5
      As with everything TC Boyle, wit, thought and a good degree of meaningfulness are present. Maybe may favorite from him to date, if only because of subject matter. Kinda like the electric kool-aide acid test with sarcasm.
    • 4/5
      The depiction of commune living here is so vivid as to be somewhat unsettling. The pettiness, irresponsibility, and complex villainy of some characters is highlighted by the patience, determination and righteousness of others, who work to keep the commune afloat through difficult transitions. The climax is, unlike in so many modern novels, both shocking and satisfying.
    • 4/5
      I read T.C. Boyle's, Tortilla Curtain, which I did enjoy, though not love. Having now read two of his books, I think I might retire this author to my "Only If There Is Nothing Else To Read" list. Not that I didn't like this story, I did, but I don't think I could take another tale of good and evil and how easy it is to confuse the two. One of the annoying things in this book is the author's tendency to use the given and hippie names of the Drop City residents interchangeably. I was always forgetting whose name had been changed to what. I am sure there is a reason for this back and forth between the two names, but for the life of me I can't figure it out.The ending sort of reminds me of the movie American Beauty. At the end, everyone sort of gets what they want or deserve (and Boyle makes it clear that what you deserve is what you really want), but the reader is left wondering if that really is the case after all. I rather like the ending, which is why this book gets a higher rating.
    • 4/5
      The California commune attracts too many moochers, cops, and zoning laws, so Alaska looks better. Alaska's not as easy as it looks.
    • 4/5
      After hearing so much about this book and repeatedly picking it up and putting it down in bookstores, I finally read it and I’m glad I did. T.C. Boyle is fast becoming one of my favorite writers and I’m sad that I didn’t start reading him earlier in my life. His ability to sharply define characters with dialogue, description and action is a finely-honed talent. He pulls no punches and doesn’t solely create people that everyone will identify with or even like. One thing I do like about Boyle, that others find irritating, is the fact that he doesn’t beat you over the head with an idea. He gives it shape and power and then lets the reader draw the conclusion. Some say this is lack of depth, but I don’t think it is because he has no depth, just chooses not to drag the reader down into it.I really enjoyed the parts that told about life in such a remote and extreme place. It was a bit like little house on the prairie because of the lack of mod cons. Ces and his wife made almost everything they had including the cabin. But they loved it. The garden was a joy. The trapping a job. The dogs weren’t pets, they were necessary equipment. No power or running water either (unless you count the river). Their dependence and independence were balanced and the fact that they opted out was compelling. I was kind of jealous of their ability to confidently eschew most of the modern world. As much as I’d like to strip away all of my dependence on society and all of its mod cons, I cannot. They are too firmly part of how I view the world and how I live. But these folks don’t need that and can leave it behind with a sigh of relief.The communal hippie lifestyle on the other hand, I have no wistful longing for. A person would really need to be selfless to live this way. To make it work, each person would have to care more about the whole than himself. Because only as a whole can it survive. If each member didn’t suppress her innate selfishness, it would collapse. I don’t have that kind of giving nature. As it turns out, very few did in this story. Sure, when times were good, they were all happy and loving and all was right with the world. But whenever some kind of hardship arose, those other core attributes of humanity came out with a vengeance. People started hording food, acting out violently from jealousy, abusing positions of leadership. All part of being human, but not helpful for a communal society.And all the drugs were off-putting. How can people even function with that amount of chemical interference? Perhaps that’s part of the glue that holds them together though. Maybe it allows them enough illusion to keep functioning. Maybe it keeps the darker nature at a bay longer. At any rate, keeping a constant supply of pot and other drugs was paramount for the members of Drop City. I thought it would be more of a hindrance in Alaska than it was, but they still survived while stoned, although not as thoroughly stoned as they were in California.Unlike The Inner Circle, this novel does have a plot, a goal, something that needs to get done. Sure, we get a lot of extraneous detail, but it is a joy to read and Boyle wrings emotion from the reader in many forms; anger, hope, joy and world-weary frustration. That’s what the hippies engendered in me anyway. They made me laugh with their dopey view of the world, but that also made me frustrated. Couldn’t they see what their problem was? They cherry-picked qualities of human nature, taking the ones they liked and leaving the ones they didn’t. Just because they didn’t like deceit, violence or selfishness, doesn’t mean they could escape them.And they are not the only ones who long for escape. The other half of the tale starts with the small town of Boynton, Alaska. Situated at the end of the state highway, Boynton is about as remote as you can get and still have a road. People who chose to live here are pretty unique. They’re self-sufficient, yet know their reliance on others in the community is the key to survival out there. They want to be free and live off the land, but unlike the hippies who will soon descend, they don’t have any sunshine and bunnies illusions about nature. It is indeed red in tooth and claw.When the hippies arrive, life soon separates the wheat from the chaff. Slackers take up with other slackers. Soon, light dawns on pot heads that they need to work to survive and work together and that means rules. It means following the rules and they finally get that they have to obey or die. They get their shelters built, some supplies laid and hunker down for the winter. But close-quarters living like this is new to them. It’s 50 below zero and there is no release from the constant chaffing of others’ bad habits. Things boil over, there is a separation into tribes and things get tense.The natives do their best to help them, specifically from Cecil Harden and his very new wife and another local Joe, a fairly wealthy bush pilot, the sworn enemy of Ces. It is this conflict that escalates throughout and eventually culminates in extreme violence and tragedy, taking one of the hippies with it. In the end, the Hardens stay in Boynton, living an idyllic life for them and have as neighbors and friends, those of the hippie commune who are tough enough in body and mind to stay.
    • 3/5
      Naïve hippies learn about society when forced to live off the land in Alaska.
    • 5/5
      This is an excellent novel which seems to me to have no weak points at all. The action is set in the late 1960s, and charts the fortunes of Drop City, a hippy commune in California that is forced by the opposition of the straight world to up sticks and transfer its operations to one of the remotest parts of Alaska, where its leader has inherited some property. The first half of the novel develops two parallel story lines, one following the declining fortunes of the commune, and the other setting the scene in and around the remote town of Boynton - the furthermost reach of mainland USA's road system - where the hippies will eventually arrive. The second half of the novel deals with what happens when they do, and although I enjoyed the twists and turns of the plot too much to give anything away, it will not spoil your pleasure if I say that there is far more to this clash of cultures than a simplistic opposition of locals and interlopers.The author's style is punchy and direct, and so is ideally suited to the subject, with an omniscient narrator whose tone of exposition varies according to whichever character is prominent in the story. There is a lot of fun at the hippies' expense, but they are not caricatures, for some of them reveal unexpected strengths and talents: one of the pleasures of the book lies in the author's exploration of their multi-faceted personalities. Likewise, although the novel is no advertisement for the denizens, culture or climate of Alaska, we come to understand something of what impels people to live lives of almost unimaginable hardship in hand-built cabins with no services or communications, enjoying a diet of moose and bear and not much else, and where the night of winter is several months long and the temperature regularly falls to 40 below freezing. Having no experience whatsoever of all this, I am quite unable to say how authentic the author's narrative actually is, but I found it totally convincing - parts of it could almost be used as a survival manual!Although the topography and natural history of Alaska, not to mention its strangeness for most readers, almost require the author to indulge in passages of description, these are always subservient to the development of plot and character, and there are no wearisome purple patches. Indeed, the narration carries the reader along in fine style, the pages flash by, and in an almost unprecedented event I kept away from the internet for 48 hours, every spare moment being given over to finding out what happened next.Wholeheartedly recommended!