Euphoria

I really liked this, but didn't realize it was based on Margaret Mead's life until I finished.

I was disappointed by this book ... there just wasn't enough to it.

Did not finish. An exciting premise but just got too rambling through chapter 5/6. Wanted to push through but did not find this warranted more of my time.

A powerful opening, and it just kept getting better. It was exquisite from the first page, and upon finishing I wanted to start right back on it to enjoy the writing without the suspense and to spend more time with the characters.

Smart, competent characters; a loathsome villain; believable relationships among them. Sex positivity. Thoughtful exploration of cultural norms (maybe a tad heavyhanded, but forgivably so). Constant addressing of the difficulty of communicating. Strong female roles. Frank no-BS treatment of grief, suicide, loneliness. Science positivity, with genuine-feeling depiction of the euphoria of learning. Basically, a lot of my hot buttons in one tidy package.

Masterful writing: King uses dialog effectively, with the shortcuts, collisions, topic shifts that make up realistic conversations. She gives us sensitive insights into the characters' head spaces. There's one narrative element I found brilliant: after the first (third-person omniscient) chapter, the story shifts to first-person. The smitten male narrator describes glances and unspoken subtexts that suggest his attraction is mutual, and the reader becomes increasingly uncomfortable about the narrator's reliability—we men do have an unsettling tendency to misinterpret attention from women. King eventually addresses this tension, but read for yourself to learn how.

I feel like I was there with these three maddening and devoted anthropologists. As a few others mentioned, it conjured State of Wonder for me. It definitely made me want to learn more about Margaret Meade.

I really liked this book, while all the while wishing it was double the length, filled with more details, and possibly written by someone like W. Somerset Maugham, just so I could love it more. It's the story of 3 anthropologists, re-imaging the time of Margaret Mead, Reo Fortune and Gregory Bateson in New Guinea in the early 1930ies. Part love story, part anthropology adventures.

The basis is all there - charming interesting characters, united in their passion for anthropology, pulling the reader into their fascination for uncovering unknown cultures... and then there's the jungle and its humidity and bugs and dangers, plus a love triangle to spice it all up. All of these things are great, I just needed more of it. So I would know the characters better and could appreciate all the emotional moments deeper. Hear more of Nell's methods for getting the tribes to trust her, understand more of Fen's charm and jealousy, and spend more time with Bankson despair and longing. Dig deeper into those polyamorous notes that emerged mid-way and then disappeared.

One of the few times I wished a book was longer, not because it was well-written, but because it seemed like it ended just as I was starting to get into the story and the characters. It's said to be loosely based on Margaret Mead, but I don't know enough about her to compare the events in this book to those in her life.

“He is wine and bread and deep in my stomach.”

An intoxicating read, with a beautiful mastery of language and character development; the kind of book you find yourself reading aloud to others verbatim because paraphrasing it would not capture the nuance or emotional impact. The story unfolded like a dream and hurled toward an emotional conclusion that left me with thoughts about the nature of culture, our powers of observation, and the influence of temperament both on our relationships as well as the development of others. And the feelings definitely root themselves deep in your stomach.

Good pacing, richly drawn characters, and a well-developed setting. Really liked the biographical elements and the depiction of 20th-century anthropology in far-flung New Guinea, but I was constantly wondering what came straight from the life of Margaret Mead and what Lily King added or changed for the story.

Along with the romantic themes and central love triangle, Euphoria is a novel of ideas as well, with the three main characters representing their cultural attributes (English, American, Australian) in their approaches to science, and mapping neatly (a bit too neatly?) to the Sepik tribes they're all investigating.

I won this book though a Goodreads giveaway and am so pleased that I did because I really enjoyed it. I felt as if I were living in a remote village in New Guinea with the characters. Definitely recommended.

Topic held no interest for me but after a few chapters I was captivated by the beauty of the writing and the characters that had become real for me. Wonderful book about three anthropologists' love triangle.

This was excellent. My only real quibble is that I wanted more of Nell's voice and less of Bateson's. We have enough male voices in this world. I want more female. Still I loved reading it and dragged the last 50 or so pages out, so I could stay with it longer.

Once you've read one fictional account of an anthropological study, you've read them all. Maybe that isn't really true, but I had a hard time shaking Hanya Yanagihara's The People in the Trees as I read Lily King's Euphoria. The setting and style are similar. One thousand miles of open ocean separate the tribes in the two books. Missing from Euphoria were the magical elements that made The People in the Trees so utterly fascinating; in its place was a realism that made the story much more believable.

I know that one day I likely won't be able to separate these books from one another—that my memory of them will be one. Already I find it a struggle. That being said, both books are very strong, and while Euphoria may not stand out to me in the same way The People in the Trees did, this is not a horrible critique. Euphoria is full of voice and setting, and it is these two elements that carry the novel. I wish I could say more—a book review that spends more time mentioning another book is not a review—but saying as much as I have has been a struggle. If you like anthropology, philosophy, or psychology, or just about any fictionalized tale of science, I recommend giving this one a try.