Flower Children

I’m probably the last person on earth who still remembers the hippie era as a time of great hope and optimism. Flower Children, like my visit to San Francisco last summer, is yet another nail in the coffin for the hippie era. Much of the story is told is plural first person, an interesting way to approach a childhood in a family of four children. The children grow up with two hippie parents, both of which come from very affluent households. There is no terrible secret or destructive action, but the children’s parents steadily deteriorate and gradually decline. It is a story that begins in great hope and slowly develops into a life of deep underlying sadness.

I highly recommend Maxine Swann's Flower Children. It's a very quick read - less a novel than interlocking short stories about children raised by hippie parents. The narrative voice ranges from chapter to chapter - from the plural (we) to a third person narrator to the voice of one of the daughters, and though this kind of transition usually bugs me, it works here.

The book follows the children through adolescence - each chapter lights on an event or a significant moment. Swann has an elegant spare style that works beautifully in the first and concluding chapters that focus on the children and the landscape surrounding their home, but as she expands her vision to include other family members in the story, she is less sucessful at show more capturing that sense of the significant moment or important transition. Still, her failures are noble ones. I really admired the way she captured the way images of our younger selves erupt through the gaps of our memories like mountains in a mist.

What I liked best is there is no sense of passing judgement on any character - a lesser sensibility would have made a 'look how my hippie parents neglected me and fucked me up' kind of book. The character of the father, esp, who really is a mess and declines as the story progresses, is drawn humourously and sympathetically. show less

I found this odd little book while wandering the fiction stacks. Written very simply and often in 1st person plural POV, it's a novel based on the author's childhood. So, it's basically a memoir, but I'm assuming she took some poetic license with events and changed all the names. For instance, some of the chapters are written in 1st person singular from the perspective of "Maeve," which I'm assuming is a substitution for Maxine.

In the beginning, the children live a carefree life with their blueblood-turned-hippie parents, but as they get older, they begin to realize that their parents are odd and try to fit in as they start school. Then their father moves to "the city" and their parents eventually divorce and eclectic boyfriends and show more girlfriends parade through their lives. Their father is a little unhinged, their mother is a bit spacey, and you can't help but feel sorry for these kids who are basically left to figure everything out on their own. It's all a little monotonous, though, and the chapters feel like each was written separately, because there are overlaps and jumps that don't always make sense. (In one chapter, the children scare off their father's girlfriend, then in the next chapter she's back without any explanation. And she's referred to later as if she hadn't already been a prominent character.)

My favorite chapters were in the middle of the book when the children visit their grandparents on both sides of the family. Those two chapters have a very Wes Anderson vibe -- from their paternal grandparents who live in a kind of eccentric squalor with various random people all living in the estate, but none really making money -- to their maternal grandmother who still observes cocktail hour and hopes that someday her daughter will marry a more suitable (read: rich & conventional) man.

Overall: a quirky, quick read, suitable for summer reading. show less

I was intrigued by the cover of this book. I grew up during the same era, and the picture of the children playing (in 70's attire) took me back to my childhood. This is a fictionalized account of Swann's childhood growing up with two Harvard-educated hippies as parents. She and her siblings had no discipline, no rules. Their parents grew pot underneath the kitchen sink. A swing hung from the ceiling.
The story follows the four children from early childhood through the middle school years as they begin to come of age. Their parents divorce, subsequent lovers, and visits to their wealthy (and very different) grandparents' homes all add to the children's view of the world and their view of their parents as well.
I enjoyed this book. show more However, the switching back and forth between first and third person points of view was distracting. I'd love to know what became of the children and their parents in later years. (You know it's a good story when you are left wondering what happened later.) show less

Lyrically written.
Novel in stories about the 4 children of hippie parents as they grow up through adulthood.

I liked this book and perhaps I'm in the minority. It is a little distracted at times, but then what in the 70s wasn't? It was a very quick read as I finished it in an afternoon. I wish the author would have given us a glimpse into the lives of these kids as adults.

Flower Children is a pretty good book, though it's more of a novella than a novel. Actually, it's more like a bunch of related short stories than anything else. That would make sense, since the book started out as a short story that was featured in the Best American Short Stories 1998 anthology.