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Euphoria by Lily King
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Euphoria (original 2014; edition 2015)

by Lily King (Author)

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingMentions
2,6271625,531 (3.89)160
"English anthropologist Andrew Banson has been alone in the field for several years, studying the Kiona river tribe in the Territory of New Guinea. Haunted by the memory of his brothers' deaths and increasingly frustrated and isolated by his research, Bankson is on the verge of suicide when a chance encounter with colleagues, the controversial Nell Stone and her wry and mercurial Australian husband, Fen, pulls him back from the brink. Nell and Fen have just fled the bloodthirsty Mumbanyo and, in spite of Nell's poor health, are hungry for a new discovery. When Bankson finds them a new tribe nearby, the artistic, female-dominated Tam, he ignites an intellectual and romantic firestorm between the three of them that burns out of anyone's control" --… (more)
Member:starbox
Title:Euphoria
Authors:Lily King (Author)
Info:Picador (2015), Edition: Main Market Ed., 272 pages
Collections:ALL FICTION READ-OWNED & UNOWNED, Read but unowned
Rating:****
Tags:*USA literature, 21st century literature, read in 2016, 2010s

Work Information

Euphoria by Lily King (2014)

  1. 41
    The People in the Trees by Hanya Yanagihara (sturlington, JuliaMaria)
    JuliaMaria: Anthropologen
  2. 30
    Dreams of Rivers and Seas by Tim Parks (bluepiano)
    bluepiano: Another novel with Bateson as a main player.
  3. 20
    Blackberry Winter: My Earlier Years by Margaret Mead (JuliaMaria)
    JuliaMaria: Autobiografie bzw. Memoiren der bekannten Anthropologin Margaret Mead
  4. 20
    With a Daughter's Eye: A Memoir of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson by Mary Catherine Bateson (JuliaMaria)
    JuliaMaria: Wie die Tochter von Margaret Mead und Gregory Bateson es sah
  5. 10
    The Inner Circle by T.C. Boyle (JuliaMaria)
    JuliaMaria: Empirische Forscher, Sexualität bzw. Bedeutung von Sexualität als wichtiges zu erforschendes Thema
  6. 10
    The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver (bjappleg8)
    bjappleg8: One is about anthropologists and the other about missionaries, but both brilliantly depict "civilized" westerners in a primitive setting and the devastating results.
  7. 00
    Measuring the World by Daniel Kehlmann (JuliaMaria)
    JuliaMaria: biografische Romane großer Forscher
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» See also 160 mentions

English (157)  German (1)  Italian (1)  French (1)  All languages (160)
Showing 1-5 of 157 (next | show all)
Margaret Mead was a pathbreaking scholar and eminent public intellectual. I don’t understand why the author, after successfully evoking her personality and work, would have her die in childbirth at an early age — which did not happen! —as the book ends. It recalls code movies where the rebellious heroine has to die for her transgressions. A very strange choice. ( )
  astorianbooklover | Mar 9, 2024 |
A tropical love triangle; erotic ethnologists; inscrutable indigenous cultures - it's a potentially steamy mix, but Lily King keeps a firm hand on the tiller as she steers this story briskly up and down the Sepik River in New Guinea. It's a compelling setting - inspired by the real 1930s romance between Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, who shared their anthropological discoveries, and more, under the mosquito nets of Oceania. Euphoria is easy to read and fast paced, but I missed something of the special electricity that I had previously imagined for Mead and Bateson - even though this is not their story. In making her fiction, it may be that King has drawn focus away from some of the intensity of forbidden love and professional intimacy by creating a (sub)plot of Western greed and tribal misfortune. ( )
  breathslow | Jan 27, 2024 |
I liked many things about this book but it didn't quite live up to the hype for me.

To be truthful this book sounded completely unappealing to me but so many people loved it that j wanted to try myself. To my surprise I really got swept up into the early part of the book.

I think my real issues are with the character Fen. There were so many odd things with this guy that never seemed to be clearly resolved. It all just bugged me and took away from my overall satisfaction. I guess I wanted some POV from him all through the book to explain him a little more.



( )
  hmonkeyreads | Jan 25, 2024 |
A compelling story based loosely on a period in Margaret Mead's career studying tribes in New Guinea. I read it in two days, a record for me! ( )
  jemisonreads | Jan 22, 2024 |
Sex on the Sepik

Loosely based on the life of American anthropologist Margaret Mead during her New Guinea studies of tribes on the Sepik River in New Guinea, this book was a slow read.

Although it includes some parts of Mead’s life, only one other real life character makes an appearance - fictionalized “Gregory Bateson” who whose name is that old Mead’s real-life second husband, but who is her lover in the book.

There is a third major character in the book - a seedy Australian who is the fictional husband. The blending of two men into one is confusing, but eventually I suspended belief and just went with it.

The novel draws on the views held by skeptics, that Mead imagined and depicted various tribal rituals according to her love life at the time. rather than by objective observation.

There are a couple of weird episodes that don’t ring true in Euphoria. One is that Mead (Nell in the novel) collaborates with her husband to form a grid depicting cultural norms by geographic regions. This supposed grid is used in WW2 by the allied and also by the Nazis. During the collaboration the lover (her husband in real life) muses that if they had known that WW2 was about to break out in Europe, maybe the war could have been averted. All a bit too much to take seriously.

The other was the description of the threesome’s trip to Sydney pre WW2. I was born in Australia post WW2 and King’s description is way off - a Sydney of the 1970s.

Yes it’s a piece of fiction, but in order to go with fiction based on historical events, the knowledgeable reader needs to be able to believe while reading.

I did enjoy Simon Vance reading in an Australian accent - the lover is an Aussie. Not a bad job, Mr Vance!

The book cover many, too many areas I think. Some of them are -
-anthropology
- transvestitism as a ritual to humiliate men
- lost love
- male chauvinism
- hints of domestic violence
- colonialism
- sociology
- threesomes
- gender
- linguistics
- romance
- grie
- New Guinea (now Papúa New Guinea)
and more. ( )
  kjuliff | Nov 6, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 157 (next | show all)
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Author nameRoleType of authorWork?Status
Lily Kingprimary authorall editionscalculated
Sands, XeNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
Vance, SimonNarratorsecondary authorsome editionsconfirmed
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Epigraph
Quarrels over women are the keynote of the New Guinea primitive world. -- Margaret Mead
Experience, contrary to common belief, is mostly imagination. -- Ruth Benedict
Dedication
For my mother, Wendy, with all my love
First words
As they were leaving the Mumbanyo, someone threw something at them.
Quotations
She felt sleep, the old heavy kind, the kind of her childhood, come for her.
Perhaps all suicides are happy in the end. Perhaps it is at that moment that one feels the real point of it all, which, after you get yourself born, is to die.
History hung suspended for months. I took solace in the not knowing.
Sometimes at night it seemed to me that my boat was not being pushed by the engine but that boat and engine both were being pulled by the river itself, the ripples of wake just a design, like a stage set moving along with us.
I can feel the relationships, the likes & dislikes in the room in a way I never could if I could speak. You didn't realize how language actually interferes with communication until you don't have it, how it gets in the way like an overdominant sense. You have to pay much more attention to everything else when you can't understand the words. Once comprehension comes, so much else falls away. You then rely on their words, and words aren't always the most reliable thing.
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"English anthropologist Andrew Banson has been alone in the field for several years, studying the Kiona river tribe in the Territory of New Guinea. Haunted by the memory of his brothers' deaths and increasingly frustrated and isolated by his research, Bankson is on the verge of suicide when a chance encounter with colleagues, the controversial Nell Stone and her wry and mercurial Australian husband, Fen, pulls him back from the brink. Nell and Fen have just fled the bloodthirsty Mumbanyo and, in spite of Nell's poor health, are hungry for a new discovery. When Bankson finds them a new tribe nearby, the artistic, female-dominated Tam, he ignites an intellectual and romantic firestorm between the three of them that burns out of anyone's control" --

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