40 pages 1 hour read

Lauren Groff

Arcadia

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2012

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Part 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 3 Summary: “Isles of the Blest”

An adult Bit paints a mural of Arcadia in his three-year-old daughter Grete’s room. Handy’s son Leif now owns Arcadia, with Arcadia House having been turned into a modern workspace. Bit tells Grete fairy tales of her mother Helle’s name. Sometime after leaving Arcadia, he married Helle, but she left their family without saying goodbye; in the meantime, his neighbor Sharon helps watch Grete. Bit works as a photography professor, but is unmoored by Helle’s absence. When she disappeared, he visited her parents. Handy is still a musician and married to his fourth wife, and main wife Astrid is still a midwife; neither had spoken to Helle in a week. Bit’s best friend Jincy lives in the suburbs with a new baby, and hadn’t heard from Helle either. In Helle’s 20s, she battled drug abuse; her brother Ike died of AIDS. Hannah and Abe recently separated, because Abe spent their life savings building a house on the outskirts of Arcadia in protest against Leif’s corporatization. Hannah was so angry that she couldn’t be of much comfort to Bit when Helle left.

Now, nine months later, women from Arcadia call Bit regularly.

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By Lauren Groff

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