Ixnay on the title, which makes it this sound like the tale of some hippy-dippy nonsense. Actually it's the tale—a fairytale--about a rigorous, home-schooling, off-the-grid family: two gorgeous parents and a passel of gorgeous kids, all of them whip-smart and wonderfully fit (one attains manhood by killing a deer single-handed with a knife); all can skin and cook game and harvest edible plants; and none knows anything of the 'outside' until the sudden death of the mother forces them out of their home deep in Oregon's forests and into the strip-mall-supermarket-superhighway world of the southwest, where manifold conflicts arise. Yes, it's a fairytale, but remarkable in several ways. There's little caricature and no smarminess or gooey sentimentality, and even the 'villains' are decent people who have some right on their side, not to mention a wider view of parenting. There are leaps of faith (how do people who live primitive lives with no modern conveniences managed to look so clean and coiffed ALL the time, except when they apply mud camouflage as an aid to assassinating deer?), but you just have to accept them (even the utterly incredible ending). If you do, this good-hearted story will entertain you and earn your respect.
Review of Captain Fantastic
