Surviving the Commune

Sandwiched between the false altruism of their parents and the all-too-real selfishness of their contemporaries, the adult children of dysfunctional hippies know all about optimism and alienation. As they come of age, those of us who are too old, too young or just too square to have arrived at our unique perspective can at least reap the benefit of their hard-won insights. Toronto’s Katrina Onstad speaks from this unusual vantage point.

Like many hip young urbanites, Maxime, the narrator of Onstad’s entertaining if rather uneven debut novel, How Happy to Be, lives in mortal fear of sincerity. “Earnestness always makes me suspicious,” she states, and nothing’s a faster turn-off than the “self-righteousness that comes with idealism.” This is hardly surprising, given that Maxime spent most of her childhood in a dreary West Coast commune where democracy looked a lot like neglect, and hypocrisy, if not downright deceit, was the norm. In one memorable flashback...