Euphoria by Lily
King was the April choice for one of my book groups. It’s not a book that I It’s always good to
read something out of one’s usual type.
Euphoria is a
fictionalized story of a time in Margaret Mead’s life while she was in New
Guinea in the 1930’s, along with anthropologists Reo Fortune and Gregory
Bateson.
Andrew Bankson (Gregory Bateson) had been researching the
Kiona tribe for years in New Guinea. He
had been relatively isolated and was recovering from a suicide attempt and
dealing with his two brother’s deaths when he met the famous Nell Stone
(Margaret Mead) and her husband Fen (Reo Fortune). The three quickly took to each other. Nell and Fen were planning to leave New
Guinea after a hard and rather disappointing time spent researching there. Andrew was quite fascinated with the couple
and did not want them to leave, so he convinced them that he would introduce
them to another tribe that would be worth researching. Andrew took them up the river a few hours
from where he lived and introduced them to another tribe, the Tam. The Tam was unusual in that the females were
more powerful than the males.
By this time, Andrew was aware of his strong feelings and
longing for Nell and was battling his desire to see and be around her. He stayed away for a few weeks, and then went
to visit to see how Nell and Fen were getting along in their new
environment. While there, Andrew and
Nell became closer and tensions began to mount between Andrew, Nell and Fen.
Not only is this a story of three young anthropologists and
their love triangle. It is also a book
that does an excellent job relating the lives of anthropologist and the
different ways that they study cultures.
The three each had their own styles and ways of studying the subjects
and that was also another conflict in the story. It was very interesting to read about the
different tribes and their cultures.
This book has won many awards, including winning the 2014
Kirkus Prize and the 2014 New England Book Award for Fiction.
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