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Maybe someday
27
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
44/100Critics
10/100Scholars
Author:
Adrian Shirk
Publisher:
Counterpoint Press
Date:
March 15, 2022
An exploration of American ideas of utopia through the lens of one millennial's quest to live a more communal life under late-stage capitalism.
What The Reviewers Say
Melding memoir with wide-ranging research into American experiments in communal living like the Shakers and The Farm (an intentional community founded by hippies in the late 1960s), Shirk seeks historical and contemporary ways of living that are more sustainable, bountiful, creative, and supportive than the siloed, workhorse model favored under capitalism. Without idealizing these communal experiments, Shirk takes their complexities and contradictions as part of the necessary reality of imagining other ways of living.
Shirk writes deftly and in depth. She is well-attuned to her topic’s threads of historical and spiritual complexity as well as her own feelings about relationships, sexuality, and community. Some readers may find that her interweaving of personal tensions with contemporary and historical narratives, and social definitions of heaven, occasionally leads to a disjointed narrative, but it’s a story worth contemplating.
... the book becomes, unintentionally, a window into rural gentrification: the migration of affluent urbanites and suburbanites to the country. That she doesn’t see her move in these terms, at a time when second-home buyers have spurred a 'freak-out housing market' in upstate New York, only highlights just how under-recognized rural gentrification is.
... enlightening.
