Euphoria
Book description
The New York Times Top Ten Bestseller
From the author of Writers & Lovers, Euphoria is Lily King's gripping novel inspired by the true story of a woman who changed the way we understand our world.
'Pretty much perfect' - Curtis Sittenfeld, author of Rodham
In 1933 three young, gifted…
Why read it?
5 authors picked Euphoria as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
I’m not a big reader of historical fiction, but this book was a big exception to that.
Nell Stone, inspired by renowned anthropologist Margaret Mead, is thoroughly engaging. And so is the portrayal of the science of anthropology and how it was done, for better or worse, in the 1930s.
Like all the books on this list, you don’t need to know about the science in the book's pages before being swept into the story. The characters taught me what I needed to know, all without me realizing it, as they made their way up rivers, into indigenous cultures, and…
From D.J.'s list on fiction books where science plays a main character.
This book surprised me on all counts. I’m not crazy about historical fiction because real lives are seldom as beautifully crafted as fictional ones and often make for dull novels. I knew nothing about Margaret Mead and cared less about archeology. Plus jungles... ew. I’d make a dismal explorer! But this book gripped me with fantastic settings and characters, and a sexy love triangle juiced it up. The story also challenged my so-far unexamined ideas about the Western study of societies and civilizations and left me thinking some good deep thoughts long after I finished. A brilliant book that tries…
From Muna's list on knocking you off your ass-umptions.
Add to the list of extraordinary women mentioned above, the anthropologist Margaret Mead. I’m embarrassed to say that I knew little of Mead and her ground-breaking work before reading this book. The novel centers on (another) love triangle between three scientists studying the Kiona tribe in New Guinea in the 1930s. The personal struggles of these three anthropologists living in sometimes harrowing circumstances cover profound emotional territory. I also found the rituals of the tribe fascinating. And the inherent conflicts that abound when observing while living inside a community make for page-turning intrigue. Despite renaming her main character Nell Stone,…
From Katherine's list on the real lives of kick-ass women.
The “girl” in this novel is a young anthropologist (inspired by the real-life Margaret Mead), and the island is New Guinea, 1933. King, a writer’s writer, has crafted a complex page-turner that’s as tight as a drum. It’s a stunner, down to the final perfect sentence, which knocked the breath out of me. I don’t think I’ve read a book in the past five years that compares craft-wise.
From Jenny's list on girls on islands.
Euphoria is a novel based on the love triangle that developed between Margaret Mead; her second husband, Reo Fortune; and the man who would become her third husband, Gregory Bateson. King did not attempt to recount the actual events that transpired in New Guinea in the early 1930s, but her research (she lists dozens of books in her acknowledgments, led by Jane Howard’s comprehensive 1984 biography, Margaret Mead: A Life) enabled her to recreate the personalities involved and the feverish atmosphere of remote fieldwork. Some of the details in the novel are invented, but the overwhelming, disjointed intensity of…
From Elesha's list on Margaret Mead and her life.
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