LOVE by Andrew Sanger by: Gerry Dunham

LOVE is a beautifully written novel about two hippies/dope freaks, Angela and Simon. It starts in Berkeley in 1968. Simon is an English kid just out to have a good time who has come to be in the center of hippydom and revolution. There’s a lot of great pages simply evoking the feel of the time, especially from the point of view of someone coming from Europe to America at that time.

Simon soon meets Angela, a much deeper person who is on a much heavier trip. Simon visually reminds Angela of her former lover Jesse, so she lets him hang around with her for that reason at first. But when the footloose Simon talks about returning to Europe for a spell and traveling, Angela decides to use Simon as a traveling companion and to get her back to Jesse.

While in London (good descriptions of people, relationships, political demonstrations), Simon meets a nice person, a bit straighter than the rest, called Lisa, who will remain in the background for the rest of the book, but who we just know will eventually be Simon’s true love.

What follows is a saga of hippy experiences of that period, including a bust in Greece that ends up with them both being thrown into jail. There are brilliant descriptions of tripping and sex.

Eventually Angela and Simon do indeed make it to India. Once there, Angela rejects Simon and returns to Jesse but he doesn’t want her – after making her pregnant. In Goa, Simon has a dazzling acid experience and decides to move on from his love for Angela, get on with his life alone. Both fulfilled and disappointed, each goes their separate ways, Angela back to California and Simon back to London.

By now it’s 1973, and there’s a sense of time coming to an end. In the last few pages we have a brief glimpse into what became of them both years later. The ending is very beautiful.