Dan ChodorkoffReseñas

I wasn't sure that I would like the book, but I'm glad that I did read it. The challenges that young people faced moving to Vermont and living off of the land - in some ways I wish I had been that idealistic. I don't necessarily agree with the political side of the story, but it was still a good read. I would recommend it to anyone wanting to escape the world we live in now, if only for a little while.

An interesting premise, but I found it too poorly written to enjoy. One sentence was an entire paragraph, and not a short paragraph either. A good editor could peobably save this book.

I found this to be an interesting read. A young, idealistic couple move to a property in Vermont to begin a commune in 1968. Completely unprepared for the experience of farming, they struggle through with the help of a pair of older neighbors. Over time, they learn to adjust to the (to them) foreign ways of rural Vermont. It was an enjoyable book.

Unfortunately, I thought the subject matter and the era in which this story took place would be enough to grab my interest. Alas, this wasn't so. Life is too short. Apologies, but DNF.

I really wish that I could say I enjoyed this book, I do love the subject matter and the era in which it took place. But the writing was so unpolished that it ruined any potential for a good story to emerge. There was an immense overuse of the exclamation mark. I could not differentiate between the various characters, they all seemed to have the same voice. It was unreadable for me. I gave it two stars only because the idea behind it was very good. The execution failed.

The year is 1968 and America is divided. Jill and David are anti-war activists. They are idealist dreamers who want to change the world. They move to a small farm in Vermont, owned by a relative of Jill's, to start a commune as a base for the resistance. They plan that other friends would live at the farm and their lives would all be cool and groovy as they plotted a way to end the war. We find out from the first that they may want to change the world but they are ill prepared to run a farm. They arrive in the midst of winter to a cabin that has no insulation and not enough wood to get them through the winter. They need to learn how to farm and depend on their nearest neighbors who have lived in their home in the mountains for many years. As spring arrives, they begin to get a revolving number of visitors. David tries to put them all to work by assigning jobs but some of them are just there for a place to go and have no intention of contributing their time to working. Some of the new people who move to the house are more interested in guns and violence than non-violence plus there are older people in the small town who look down on those 'useless hippies' so they are always in some danger in the place that they hoped to find love and peace. When winter arrives again, many of the residents move back to the warmth of the city. Will David and Jill be able to maintain their dream of creating a base for the resistance or will the work involved in running a farm in Vermont take most of their time. Will they lose faith in their original dreams??

This is a very character driven novel with David and Jill telling the story. I liked both characters - hard working David more than idealist Jill. My only complaint about the book is that I thought it was a bit too long and bogged down several times but overall this is great story of dreams for the future versus the reality of day to day life.

--ARC provided by LibraryThing and Fomite Press in exchange for an honest review.--

Chodorkoff presents a novel that is strongly reminiscent of John Steinbeck's "In Dubious Battle," seasoned with Richard Brautigan and Jefferson Airplane. That might sound terrible but, in the end, "Sugaring Down" is a carefully-constructed and richly-told, first-person narrative that wraps the reader in the bipolar nature of the late-1960s' counter-culture: utopian collectivism and radical activism sitting side-by-jowl until no longer tenable. Chodorkoff maintains a profound sense of place -- of setting, emotional state, and the interplay between the two -- throughout, and it's the real strength of the book. The players are ephemeral in the long run, and the crises of 1969 are compared time and again to the labor/anarchist actions of the early 1920s that also shook the area; even the long-time residents have finite lives. The mountains are forever, and the forest will outlive the story. I was a kid in northern New England (Maine, if not Vermont) during the period described, and I can see several of my older cousins in the main characters; their stories are long obscured, but the land continues. Chodorkoff is clear about that, and it works; there's more than just invention in this fiction.

The book should have a soundtrack, though. Dylan, definitely; maybe some Country Joe and the Fish, Melanie, Sly and the Family Stone. The prose is rich but the two narrative characters, David and Jill, live so much inside their own heads that it gets claustrophobic in there; the participation of their older neighbors Leland and Mary carry a great load of the emotional effect of "Sugaring Down." Perhaps that was also intentional.

As much as I enjoyed this book, the utopian idealism and hope the kids carry into the story, and the joy of the Vermont wilderness that carries it all are overwhelmed by the grim, the inevitable failures, and the overly-heavy characters Mark and Big Bill. Steinbeck's 1936 novel merits re-reads but, for me, I'm not sure I'll want to revisit this one any time soon.