Euphoria

Locations
Call Number: Fiction / King, Lily, Adult Book / Fiction / Historical / King, Lily
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / King, Lily	4-week checkout	Reshelving
Malletts Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Historical / King, Lily	4-week checkout	Due 05-08-2024

"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" -- from publisher's web site.

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Couldn't Put It Down submitted by katiewhitney on August 27, 2015, 5:52am What a whirlwind of a book! I feel like there are no wasted words. It immediately plunges you into a foreign world--1930s anthropology in New Guinea--but anchors you in such human concerns that you can't feel completely disoriented. And there's nothing labored about it. There's an interesting narrative structure that I haven't encountered exactly in this way before: the story begins in limited 3rd person, then a 1st-person narrator arrives out of nowhere, then there's another 1st-person narrative in diary form. What usually happens in a book with more than one perspective is that the transitions feel false, labored, or abusive to the reader at some point. But Euphoria is so fast-paced, condensed really, that I never had that feeling that I'd have to slog through the next bit to get back to the narration I want. I never felt abandoned. And the historical element is just effortless. I never felt at any moment, gosh a lot of research went into this! And yet, a lot of research did. I think it's difficult for a writer who's done so much research not to show off, not to "share" it all in long descriptive passages or get so lost in the verisimilitude of the historical era that they abandon the verisimilitude of a human psyche. When I first read about this book, I worried it would be a lot of yearning and unrequited love with some sexy stuff thrown in. Frankly it sounded kind of trashy, high-brow trashy. But I was so pleasantly surprised. I cared quickly and deeply for these characters, and it's not a typical fictional love triangle where everyone's chasing someone they can't have. Really, triangle is just a facile descriptor, the usual back-cover violence. This is just a really darn good novel. Enjoy!

Gorgeous novel submitted by RachelW12 on July 3, 2016, 12:09pm Lily King's prose is captivating -- her writing captures the essence of the thrill of hands-on anthropological scholarship and the fine line academics walk between studying a culture and exploiting it. I found all three of her main characters to be extraordinarily complex and reflective of the attitudes of that era.

good read submitted by Sunny29 on August 9, 2017, 2:06pm Admittedly it took me a few chapters to get into King's writing style, but once you do it's pretty transformative to the period the book was written (1930's). I enjoyed the story, it was a quick read with interesting characteres, but what a bummer of an ending!