Interesting, but ... - Rated 
Tobias Jones went looking for something. He wasn't entirely sure what it was, just that it would be different to the unsatisfying fast-paced modern lifestyle that he had been struggling with for some time.
So he went community hopping. He visited a range of different, reasonably self-contained 'communities', all with a common theme of separation from the 'normal' world, generally with religious roots to some extent, in Italy and the UK. He explores how communities in general are built, whether they work, and whether spirituality and/or religion are necessary for a successful community.
In the end his answer is probably "yes", communities need some sort of foundation based on shared beliefs or objectives. In addition, he made the remarkable discovery (for a metropolitan type) that hard manual work is good for the soul. Yep, it can be, so long as you don't have to do it for your entire life for a pittance. It's different if you've volunteered for it for a while before disappearing back to your comfy city home. To some extent that is all probably stating the blindingly obvious, but he has some interesting takes on the how and why.
There are some problems of course: he visited 5 different groups in the space of a year, which is probably not really enough time to fully dig down to the core and truly understand whether they work. Most of them have issues: the half-barmy, half-deeply cynical Damanhur in Italy swings from self-indulgence to completely spaced out pottiness. Nomadelfia, a catholic Italian village style group, is easier on the mind, but there are clear undercurrents of the worst sort of roman catholic insularity and intolerance.
The Quaker village near York is an oddity, as it is really just a very expensive retirement/care home facility, populated by well-heeled and often intellectual and activist over-sixties. I'm not sure it's relevant to anything much.
Pilsdon, an apparently genuinely open and caring place for people with real problems (rather than those suffering from self-indulgence, like some of the others) seemed to me to be the only one that really achieved, in a realistic and open but knowingly limited way, what it set out to do.
The accounts of the places themselves are interesting, and there are intriguing ideas and questions arising from how they work. One thing that struck me was that most of them (Pilsdon very much aside) achieved their separation from the 'real world' in a very artificial manner. They were either dependent on mundane commerce, or hand-outs from the church or wealthy trusts/benefactors. To some extent their other-worldliness is a fraud.
The main problems with the book are the author's wanderings into philosophy and musings on his own life-issues and the more general subject of community. Some of them are interesting; some of them, unfortunately, are utter piffle. Some of his more exotic flights of prose fancy don't actually make any sense, and he has a habit of building a theory or idea on firmly stated truths that he appears to have invented on the spot.
Overall, interesting, but the conclusions are not clear. Jones seems to have come away with a clearer mind (and a 1 mile radius exclusion zone round his house!) but there are hints of the same self-indulgence that afflicts some of the Damanhur types in particular.
A thoughtful exploration of life together - Rated
Utopian Dreams, by Tobias Jones, is part travelogue, part philosophy. Tired of the frustrations and empty promises of consumer culture, he sets off on a search for something more meaningful. With his wife and child, he takes a year out to visit a series of communities in the UK and Italy.
The journey takes them to the new-age paradise of Damanhur, the Catholic orphanage of Nomadelfia, the Rowntree Trust's ideal Quaker retirement village, an Italian anti-mafia cooperative, and finally a rural community in Dorset. He is forced to re-evaluate his priorities, as he mixes with priests and peasants, hippies, tramps, ex-cons, drug addicts. In the midst of it all Jones discovers freedom as a life goal, rather than the absence of boundaries. He finds purpose and expression in manual labour. He has to re-think his view of the Christian faith he grew up with and now questions.
Utopian Dreams is a great exploration of the whole idea of community, and of those who choose to model an alternative to our consumer culture. Speaking honestly and humbly about his own search for a good life, Tobias Jones proves a useful observer of the idealists, dreamers, frauds and prophets behind these bold social experiments. It ends back at home, where Jones has discovered a community at the end of his street. Fittingly, it is here that he commits himself, with all the counter-cultural patience and permanence it requires.
An Opportunity Lost - Rated 
Anyone who, like me, expected to encounter a genuine study of alternative communities in Tobias Jones' travel book Utopian Dreams, will be well displeased by a project that had so much potential, but ultimately got lost amidst its author's self indulgent penchant for repetitive meta-narrative.
In all fairness, I should have paid more attention to the books subtitle; 'In search of a good life'. Even then, the front cover should have stipulated more clearly that it was Tobias Jones' search for a good life rather than the communities he visited! I estimate that the first chapter, in which he visits the alternative community of Damanhur in Italy is 25% experience and 75% reflection. Granted, this is the community that Jones has least time for and the ratio settles at around 40:60 for the remainder of the book, but when I read a travel book I want to read stories, rather than recycled rhetoric and supposedly enlightening quotes from Kant, Voltaire et al.
His prose is at times entertaining and at others, toe-curlingly trite. Take this as an example of soundbites that occurs throughout the book: '..in the New Age the obsession is about humans becoming divine; at Nomodelfia its about the divine becoming human.'
A few pages previous to this particular quote he details a conversation about faith and evolution between one of the elders in the Nomodelfia community (the second community he visits) and an adolescent called Alessio. It is a magical paragraph in the book because it concerns the unadulterated interaction of members of this community (and possible tensions within it), rather than Tobias' ism-tainted observations thereof, or their interactions WITH Tobias, or Tobias' musings on what's missing in his own life etc etc etc. Deliciously human, the moment speaks for itself without the need for further analysis. I wanted the whole book to be like this!
But it isn't, and whilst Tobias's observations of western consumerism are poignant and necessary in order to provide some sort of contrast to the communities he visits, the reason for the 'great escape' as it were, they have also been made before, in rhetoric of both greater and lesser eloquence. They could also have been made more briefly and saved some trees in the process.
I wanted to know more about the characters he met, their personal histories, their world outlook and so on. What we are given instead is teasing glimpses, punctuated by Jones' commentary on Bentham's utilitarianism and Rousseau's earthy idealism. If I wanted to know more about dead philosophers I'd be reading their works not his!
Of course their are connections to be made between the thinkers of the enlightenment and alternative communities that have abandonned societies without balance, virtue or permanency. But Tobias Jones makes them too often and his conflicted defense of religion is as nauseating as Richard Dawkins rottweiler-like attacks on it.
I haven't read 'The Dark Heart of Italy', which is reportedly superb, so I won't cast judgement on Tobias Jones' abilities as a travel writer. But when I read travel books I want to get lost in the places and the people, not the mind of the person writing them.
For anyone else that loves travel books where observations are subtle, and secondary to description, I would recommend Wendell Staevenson's 'Stories I Stole' or any of Tim Parks' efforts. Parks, ironically, is also an Englishman who fell in love with Italy and now lives in the country.
I would like to end this review by saying that 'Utopian Dreams' isn't an awful book. Its just that the combination of a reputed writer and a subject matter that really interests me had led me to expect a lot more.
Defining Communities - Rated
Clever, humble, well researched. Jones documents his stay in various communities over the space of a year. Though their motivations differ he finds common trends and shared goals that make him question his own place in society and just what he intends to achieve with his life. I found myself jotting down quotes or interesting ideas every other page and seriously fascinated with all the very different reasons for and expectations people had of what living with others would do for them. I think the community that caught my imagination most was the Quaker community of elderly folks set up by the Rowntrees. I found the idea of elderly people coming together to feel safe, involved and cared for was perhaps the most pragmatic discussed in the book and it sounded realistic and down to earth.
Jones has an ability to give a flavour of the communities, their participants and daily routines with flair and this makes the book one of my favourites of the year so far, however since he travelled for most of the time with his wife and child I would have liked to hear more of his wife's thoughts about the places they visited. For this reason a 10/10 is moved to a 8/10.
Thank You Tobias Jones - Rated 
Utopian Dreams is my book of the year. Just when we were all about to despair... along came Tobias Jones. This book is erudite, wise, lucid, clever, humble and very important; a profound joy and a complete relief. Here is someone expressing what we are all thinking, sorting out the confusion, and offering a way out of the mess we're all in. I'll be recommending it to anyone and everyone who'll listen and buying a copy for everyone I love. Amazing.
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