Friday, October 24, 2014

Review of 2014 Kirkus Prizewinner Euphoria by Lily King

Last night the first winners of the Kirkus Prizes were announced. This is a brand new set of prizes in the literary world, with one of the richest awards--$50,000 each for the winners of the fiction, nonfiction, and young readers' literature categories.

And the very first winner of the Kirkus Prize for Fiction is Euphoria by Lily King, a wonderful novel that I read and loved over the summer. This intelligent and satisfying novel, published on June 3, 2014, by Atlantic Monthly Press, is loosely based on a real-life love triangle of anthropologists studying tribes in Papua New Guinea in the 1930s. I am so glad this book was recognized with a major new literary award; I feel like it flew a bit under the radar this summer. Therefore, I decided to re-post my review of Euphoria, which originally ran on this blog on July 13th of this year. I highly recommend this novel to readers of both literary and historical fiction.

Euphoria by Lily King is an intriguing and sophisticated novel about three anthropologists studying tribes in Papua New Guinea in the 1930s. Loosely based on a real-life love triangle involving Margaret Mead, this piece of literary historical fiction offers an exhilarating mix of the cerebral and the passionate. King considers love, marriage, jealousy, as well as issues of cultural relativism and cultural imperialism.

The Story: King opens the book with a married team of anthropologists beating a hasty retreat from a violent New Guinean tribe called the Mumbanyo. As the couple departs by canoe, a tribe member throws something at them. “'Another dead baby,' Fen said. He had broken her glasses by then, so she didn’t know if he was joking.”

The man and woman are Nell and Fen, clearly modeled on the famous anthropologist Margaret Mead and her second husband, Reo Fortune. Nell has recently achieved fame from her work, and Fen struggles with resentment at her sudden success. Searching for another tribe to study, Nell and Fen meet up with another anthropologist, an emotionally damaged Brit by the name of Bankson (based on Mead’s real-life third husband, Gregory Bateson). The three social scientists begin an intense intellectual collaboration and, soon, fierce desires threaten the balance between them.

My Thoughts: I found Euphoria to be an interesting and deeply satisfying read. The subject, to me, was fascinating; I’ve retained an interest in anthropology since college. King thoroughly researched the lives and work of Mead, Fortune, and Bateson, and ably represents the controversies and issues in the field of anthropology in the 1930s.

But the novel isn’t completely focused on anthropology—far from it. King includes plenty of messy human emotions and complicated relationships. I think this is why the book resonated with me so much. It isn’t often that a literary novel combines big ideas with such an engrossing plot and fascinating set of characters.

Novels based on the lives of real people can be a tricky proposition. Of late, I have found some of these sorts of novels to be disappointing because, often, the writer seems constrained by the real-life trajectory of the characters’ lives. King makes the decision here to deviate from the facts of Mead’s life and create a new ending for Nell, Fen, and Bankson. I will admit that I did not particularly LIKE the ending King chose for her characters, but regardless, I appreciated the suspense of not knowing exactly what would happen.

Euphoria has been compared to Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder, Hanya Yanagihara’s The People in the Trees, and Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski, all novels in which anthropology plays a central role. Of these other works, I have only read State of Wonder, and I think that Euphoria is the better novel—it is tighter and more focused than Patchett’s book. I do want to read the novels by Yanagihara and Berlinski.

I would rate Euphoria a 4 and a half out of 5 stars. I highly recommend it to those who read literary fiction.

8 comments:

  1. Novels about real people are always fascinating. I just have to remind myself that the conversations and some of the events are imaginary, even though the people were real!

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    1. Agreed! And these novels are always fascinating if you were interested in the real-life person to begin with. Margaret Mead's real-life love triangle was an absolutely terrific idea for a novel.

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  2. When I was a teen in the 1960s, I read a long biography of Margaret Mead in a search for women doing something exciting. I just looked her up online and rediscovered one of the reasons I was so interested in her. Her 1935 book, Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies "advances the theory that many so-called masculine and feminine characteristics are not based on fundamental sex differences but reflect the cultural conditioning of different societies." That was something I was desperate to hear since I didn't fit the mass media images of girls and women in American society. So I am really looking forward to reading this book!

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    1. Yes, Mead and her research were both so interesting! The character of Nell is a fictional character, but seems definitely to be based on Mead, in terms of her personal life and her research. It's a fascinating novel!

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  3. Congratulations to Lily King! This book remains on my wish list and I'm hoping to fit it in soon. I noticed the audio version is also very highly recommended.

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    1. That's good--I could see this being a good audiobook because there is definitely an interesting plot!

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  4. I'm glad you reposted this! I remember hearing about this book over the summer, but it never really made it onto my radar. Clearly, it should have!

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    1. I do think this novel got overlooked a bit this summer, so I'm hoping this prize will give it a boost and get it some additional readers! I'd never read Lily King before, but I'll have to take a look at her backlist, as well.

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