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 found the characters in this book to be some of the most realistic contemporary characters I had ever read. Perhaps, this is all drawn heavily from the author's personal life a previous reviewer noted a lot of Swann's were thanked in the acknowledgments, but the magic was in the details for me on this one.