Euphoria - Hardcover

King, Lily

3.86

92,493 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1447286162 ISBN 13: 9781447286165

Publisher: Picador, 2014

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Winner of the 2014 Kirkus Prize for Fiction 'It's that moment about two months in, when you think you've finally got a handle on the place. Suddenly it feels within your grasp . . . feels entirely yours. It's the briefest, purest euphoria.' It is December 1932 and Andrew Bankson, isolated for several years whilst studying a tribe in New Guinea, is increasingly frustrated by his research. Then on Christmas Eve, he meets Nell Stone, famous and controversial anthropologist, and her wry, mercurial husband, Fen. Enthralled by the magnetic couple, Bankson promises to take Nell and Fen to a new tribe they can study, and within months the three are producing their best ever work. But this intense new environment is dangerous as well as invigorating, and soon Bankson has ignited a firestorm of fierce love and jealousy that burns out of control. Ultimately, their ground-breaking work will make history, but not without terrible sacrifice. Set between the wars in a landscape on the brink of massive and irreversible change, Euphoria by Lily King is a captivating story of desire, possession and discovery inspired by real events in the life of Margaret Mead, a woman whose work changed the way we understand our world.

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Review:

An Amazon Best Book of the Month, June 2014: If I tell you that Euphoria is a novel loosely based on the life of the anthropologist Margaret Mead, your eyes will start to glaze over. Well, they shouldn’t--not when the novel is as wonderful as this one. Its both romantic and intelligent, a combination you don’t need to be a scientist to know doesn’t appear often in nature. Mead, a controversial character in real life, is here transmuted into the equally complex (and somewhat sickly) Nell Stone, who has made a reputation for herself by studying native tribes in New Guinea. Her husband, also an anthropologist, is more jealous than dutiful, although he does manage to make her feel inadequate for failing to produce a baby. Enter a charming-but-tortured third anthropologist, who at times seems to be unsure to which of his new friends he’s more attracted. Sparks of the emotional and sexual kind fly, but what’s even more interesting is the portrait of a growing friendship based at least partly on philosophy and attitudes toward “primitive” cultures. You know from the beginning that some bad things are going to happen, but it is to King’s great credit (and the fact that she changes some of the events in Mead’s life) that you can’t really guess what they are. This is the best kind of historical novel--the kind that sent me running to read more about its real-life inspiration. --Sara Nelson

About the Author:

Lily King is the author of the novels The Pleasing Hour, The English Teacher, Father of the Rain, and Euphoria, which is inspired by the life of revolutionary anthropologist Margaret Mead. King is the recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award and has twice won both the Maine Fiction Award and the New England Book Award. She lives with her husband and children in Maine.

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