Where Have All the Years Gone?

On 7/6/10, I wrote positively about Joan Frank's book "In Envy Country." I have now read two more of her books (they are short!): "Boys Keep Being Born: Stories" (University of Missouri Press, 2001) and "The Great Far Away" (The Permanent Press, 2007) (a novel which I will refer to here as GFA), and liked both of them very much as well. These two books, and especially GFA, focus on Baby Boomers who started their adult lives in the 70s, sure that their "alternative" lives would be different than those of their parents. They were going to avoid the "Straight Life," because "They were meant for better things, they knew" (GFA, p. 15). The novel takes place in a small town in Northern California, where a "tribe" of young people gathers, enjoying their freedom, their music, their weed, their relationships, and their heady sense of living their lives in a purer way than their forebears. Naturally, as they mature and gain families, more traditional and better-paying jobs, and houses with attendant mortgages, and as they experience sad losses and disillusioning betrayals, they find that life is more complicated than they expected. In addition, the town itself becomes bigger, more overrun by houses and chain stores, and more a part of the larger world. The tone of the novel is elegiac and a bit wistful, as it harks back to a time when life was simpler for these characters and for their town. These Boomer ex-hippies (for want of a better label) wonder where the time has gone, and can't quite believe they - and their contemporaries and their enchanted worlds - have gotten so much older and changed so much. Being a member of this generation myself, I can relate. And I suddenly had a flash of the Who's iconic 1965 song "Talkin' 'bout my Generation"....