Critical Praise

“Richly peopled and ambitious and oh, so lovely, Lauren Groff’s ARCADIA is one of the most moving and satisfying novels I’ve read in a long time. It’s not possible to write any better without showing off.”
   —Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of EMPIRE FALLS

“The raw beauty of Ms. Groff’s prose is one of the best things about ARCADIA. But it is by no means this book’s only kind of splendor.”
   —Janet Maslin, The New York Times

“I was constantly torn between wanting to gulp down this book or savor its lines. Even the most incidental details vibrate with life…ARCADIA wends a harrowing path back to a fragile, lovely place you can believe in.”
   —Ron Charles, The Washington Post

“Part STONE DIARIES, part LORD OF THE FLIES, part something out of a Shakespearean tragedy, Lauren Groff’s ARCADIA is so uniquely absorbing that you finish it as if waking from a dream. Groff is one of our most talented writers, and ARCADIA one of the most revelatory, magical, and ambitious novels I’ve read in years.”
   —Kate Walbert, author of the New York Times bestselling novel A SHORT HISTORY OF WOMEN

“Groff has made [this story] wholly hers. Refusing to deck out her narrative in period tie-dye, Groff uses language at once nuanced, pointed, and gorgeous to vivify her setting…Ambrosia for books clubs; consider multiples.”
   —Library Journal,“Barbara’s Picks”

“Groff’s beautiful prose make this an unforgettable read.”
   —Publishers Weekly Starred Review

“An astonishing novel, both in ambition and achievement.”
   —Kirkus Reviews Starred Review

“[A] beautifully crafted novel...[it] gives full rein to [Groff's] formidable descriptive powers, as she summons both the beauty of striving for perfection and the inevitable devastation of failing so miserably to achieve it.”
   —Booklist Starred Review

“A moving look at the value of human connection in a scary, chaotic world.”
   —Entertainment Weekly

“Dazzling…At a moment when so much floating anger struggles for articulation, it's Groff's essential human empathy that gives her work its urgency.”
   —Vogue

“Groff's prismatic prose style lends itself to the darker currents that run beneath the Arcadian dream…Both poetic and ambitious.”
   —Elle

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