News From the City of the Sun

News From the City of the Sun / Isabel Colegate
NY: Penguin, 1993.
251 p.

Dorothy Grant is a young girl, an only child, living in the English countryside in the 30s. At nine, she is out walking on Salisbury Plain when she comes across the new people living in The Abbey near her home. It is three brothers, Fisher, Hamilton and Arthur Whitehead, who have decided on setting up an intentional community there (funded, conveniently, by their family money). The setting and the unusual lifestyle attract Dorothy greatly.

Her own staid family is horrified by this group and want her to stay away, but the brothers manage it so that one of the Abbey women gives piano lessons that Dorothy is permitted to attend. In this way she becomes a part of this little group, and it's through her eyes that we see much of the development and eventual dissolution of the community in the 1970s. 

There is a plethora of characters in this story and at times it makes it a bit harder to follow. There are people coming and going, and the tenor changes as time moves on and suddenly there are young hippies, drug users and revolutionaries appearing, wanting to camp out there too. But the brothers envisioned this as a happy, intellectual but hands-on communal way of life, not a haven for drop-outs. They have no rules for community members -- Fisher just makes a decree about any disputed issues. And so, when the brothers go, so too does the community. 

I liked this book; I like Colegate's style and her way of looking at things. Dorothy is an interesting character, but I feel like her story gets a little overshadowed by the brothers and their doings. And I didn't like the last quarter of the book when the 60s and 70s take over. It feels like the story has gone on too long, for me. I wanted to keep the idealistic 30s/40s feel of the beginning of the book. 

There are so many little branches of individual stories that collide and branch off and are left unfinished or fully explored -- it's like a kaleidoscope of a story that melds individual and wider societal experiences to give a final picture. There's wartime, aristocracy on a downward trajectory, the three brothers themselves, hippies, drugs and the youthquake -- it's all shaken up together. Quite fascinating, and the skill of the author really holds it together. It's a quieter read, and takes some concentration to keep everyone straight, but as a look at a slice of eccentric English life over a few decades, it delivers.