Euphoria

by Lily King

Paperback, 2015

Status

Available

Genres

Publication

Grove Press (2015), Edition: Reprint, 288 pages

Description

"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" --… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member bookczuk

For a book that swallowed my attention up whole, now that some time has passed, I'm having trouble grasping thoughts to write. Anthropology is a deep part of my life, though it has been pushed to the shadows by other passions since the days at University when it was one of my majors. In those days,

Margaret Mead was not only a fundamental name in the discipline, but she was still alive, and even came to lecture within spitting distance of where I was studying, so of course, we bundled into a car to drive to hear her speak. We weren't able to get in to the talk, but spent the time sitting on the steps, making up what we thought she might have said.

This book is also a "might have been", as the central character is loosely based on Mead. King spins a new tale, using the almost-Mead character, that of two of her husbands, and the exploration of a 1933 field expedition to New Guinea. It helped give a glimpse of what the world must have been like when Coming of Age in Samoa was published, and was considered both daring and scandalous, rather than a classic study. The story itself is passionate, complex, and well-spun, with glimmers of humor that came through. The character of Nell grabbed me with both hands and refused to let go. I was caught back in time, back in 1933, when anthropology was in its early days. What a world!

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LibraryThing member Vicki_Weisfeld

Based on events in the life of noted anthropologist Margaret Mead, Euphoria is the story of the warping of personality and relationships that occurs when a person is immersed in an alien culture. What survives, what does not.
In the 1930s, British anthropologist Andrew Bankson has lived a little

too long, a little too isolated in a remote region of the Territory of New Guinea, studying the Kiona culture. A chance meeting with a married couple—fellow anthropologists Schuyler Fenwick, an Australian, and his successfully published wife, American Nell Stone—is an overpowering dose of the familiar, of kinship. It’s a lifeline for him. “I felt my loneliness bulge out of me like a goiter,” he writes from a later period, after a successful career.
Bankson is so grateful to talk to these other scientists, to speak English, to gossip, to have common reference points, he giddily persuades them to take on the study of a tribe father up the Sepik River that will place them at least within a few hours’ journey of the Kiona settlement. Physically and emotionally damaged from a few months with the ultra-violent Mumbanyo tribe, the couple also needs a change.
In Nell, Bankson finds a colleague with whom he can discuss, probe, and explore theories about the Kiona and even the entire purpose of anthropological research. Fen isn’t interested. He’s living off Nell’s grant money, not researching in any real sense, not documenting, not writing. He’s occupied in being jealous of his wife, perfecting his skills at self-justification, and letting his moral rudder erode.
Bankson learns much from Nell. His reminiscences about those heady days are interspersed with excerpts from her journal of the same time. Together, these sources create “a taut, witty, fiercely intelligent tale of competing egos and desires in a landscape of exotic menace—a love triangle in extremis,” said reviewer Emily Eakin in the New York Times.
One of the fascinating aspects of the book is King’s descriptions of Nell’s methods—the kinds of questions she asks, the ways she elicits information, her nonjudgmental attitude, her respect. (Would she had been more judgmental about her husband.) The title refers to what she calls the deceptive moment of clarity "When you think you finally have a handle on the place. . . the briefest, purest euphoria."
At one point, Nell writes in her journal: “You don’t realize how language actually interferes with communication until you don’t have it, how it gets in the way like an overdominant sense. You have to pay much more attention to everything else when you can’t understand the words . . .words aren’t always the most reliable thing.” Yet, in advancing within their scientific community, words are exactly what they depend on. What words to choose and how to arrange them appears to be a Stone/Fenwick/Bankson breakthrough.
King does a terrific job evoking a sense of place, a thin fog of menace, and the cultures in which the scientists immerse themselves. When it was published in 2014, the book won the Kirkus Prize and the New England Book Award for Fiction, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was named a “best book of the year” by nearly 20 news outlets.
In real life, by the time Mead reached New Guinea, she was married to New Zealand anthropologist Reo Fortune and had published her popular and influential Coming of Age in Samoa. New Guinea research colleague Gregory Bateson became Mead’s third husband, and many of the details of the fictional Bankson’s life—his education, the deaths of his two brothers—mirror Gregory’s, but the plot of this book takes a quite different turn. It’s as if the author, musing on the three scientists stranded in the jungle, said to herself, “What if?”

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LibraryThing member Perednia

It doesn't take big events or historical movements for individuals to feel they don't understand the rest of the human race. People are rather curious creatures, after all, prone to actions that seem counter-intuitive, endeavors that seem hopeless or cruel, emotions that appear more at home in left

field than in the heart.

These things happen every day, from the normally cheerful person at work who scowls at everyone to the oddball actions drivers take on the road.

And they happen to all sorts of people. That's one of the graces of Lily King's Euphoria. It's a novel inspired by Margaret Mead, her second husband Reo Fortune and her future husband Gregory Bateson, all anthropologists who were involved in a love triangle and professional collaboration while researching in Papua New Guinea. These highly intelligent people who are trained to observe others do some of the damnedest things. (For photographs of the trio and some of their work, see the archived material available at the Library of Congress.)

The characters in King's novel, which was short-listed for the National Book Award, resemble what is easily found via Google search about the real people. Reo Fortune, Mead's husband when the three met, appears jealous of his wife. (He tried to discredit his wife's work after their divorce; see "Arapesh Warfare:" Reo Fortune's Veiled Critique of Margaret Mead's Sex and Temperament in American Anthropologist. Nell, like Mead, makes a name for herself writing her observations of the gender and sexual roles of women and children.

It's easy to see that the characters Bankson and Nell are going to fall for each other. And it's easy to see that Fen both feels jealous and yet wants to keep an unsteady equilibrium going. The physical and emotional aspects of the novel are probably paramount to most readers. And boy, does King ever deliver.

Despite the somewhat clumsy set-up to the romantic climax, the emotions are genuinely conveyed and bittersweet is the prominent tone. That there is delicate storytelling woven into a narrative fascinated with graphic examples of swapping of traditional Western culture sexual and gender roles is all the more powerful for its context.

Nell describes the moment when an anthropologist gets the feeling that she is at the right place doing the right thing. What she says applies to a relationship between two people as well:

"It's that moment two months in, when you think you've finally got a handle on the place. Suddenly it feels within your grasp. It's a delusion -- you've only been there eight weeks -- and it's followed by the complete despair of ever understanding anything. But at that moment the place feels entirely yours. It's the briefest, purest euphoria."
I usually steer clear of novels that take real people as their subject. But King did something different here. Her Nell and Fen, married anthropologists who run into Bankson, another professional in their fairly new field, don't have the same outcome as the real people.
It's their feelings, professional ideas and aspirations, and, by implication, as the work of all literary writers is, the wider ramifications of what these things tell us about human beings, that are more important to King's work than to salacious rehashing old scandalous acts.

In the respect of looking at individuals to reach a conclusion about a group, the work of a novelist and an anthropologist are similar. King noted this in an interview with Vogue. It's something I noticed when first reading Barbara Pym; many of the characters in her novels are involved with anthropology or fascinated by anthropologists. They study each other and it's quite obvious many times that they belong to different tribes, just as Nell, Fen and Bankson belong to different tribes. Their professional work is an attempt to differentiate people and subsets of people into larger groupings.

"We tell ourselves stories in order to live," wrote Joan Didion. We also tell ourselves stories to make sense of the world and, often, to try to bring order to it. Putting people into categories or tribes is one way to do that.

That word "tribes" in and of itself can provoke a squeamish reaction. Just who are any of us to be studying others as if they were inferior? In King's novel, Fen obviously regards the peoples he studies as inferior. Bankson, the character who narrates most of the novel, doesn't feel he is superior but is like Fen in some ways. Nell is the character who acts most like someone who believes in equality, and yet as a woman in 1930s Western culture she is not treated with equality. Early on, she says that "For me, other people are the point." She lives as she thinks.

Today many people believe other people are inferior to them. When Michael Brown is reduced to an animal and a cartoon figure by the man who killed him, when police call protestors animals, when Tamir Rice's parents' names are smeared as if that justified gunning down a 12-year-old child, when rich people and their corporations aren't worried about individual lives because there are enough of us to replace their workers, it's hard to believe we've progressed as a species. These people are difficult for me to understand.

Reading a particular novel, or any number of novels, may not make them any more understandable. But the reading gives me a chance to think beyond the headlines, to think past the individual events that show me a little more about how people fit together. Like an anthropologist, I'm an observer. With novels such as Euphoria as a reminder, I know I am not better than those I observe. Understanding others won't make them better or worse, but it might make me from becoming worse.

This thinking is echoed in some respect by Nell's writing in her journal:

"Who are we and where are we going? Why are we, with all our 'progress,' so limited in understanding & sympathy & the ability to give each other real freedom? ...
I think above all else it is freedom I search for in my work, in these far-flung places, to find a group of people who give each other the room to _be_ in whatever way they need to be. And maybe I will never find it all in one culture but maybe I can find parts of it in several cultures, maybe I can piece it together like a mosaic and unveil it to the world."

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LibraryThing member lilykumpeconscious

I first heard of Euphoria when it was selected by The New York Times Book Review as one of the top 10 books of 2014. The basic details (Papua New Guinea, Margaret Mead, love triangle) captured my interest, and I started reading the book shortly after reading the review.

Set in the 1930’s , the

novel was inspired by an anthropology field trip in which Margaret Mead and her husband worked with the man who would become Mead’s next husband. The author, Lily King, embellishes the story with sexual tension, physical & psychological abuse, drug abuse, theft, murder, adultery, homo-eroticism (male-male and female-female), and the descriptive melding of academic minds on the brink of a collective breakthrough.

This as an easy read with a flowing narrative and a plot structure that keeps you hooked. I’d recommend it as a book to read for pleasure, but I wouldn't call it “great”. From the beginning, Fen is outwardly such an evil person that you wonder what Nell is doing with him in the first place. This irritates me throughout the story. I also read with scepticism after reading reviews on Amazon.com that reveal some of the novel’s descriptions of Papua New Guinea to be embarrassingly inaccurate. Then again, this is fiction, and not a book to reference for information on the wildlife of Papua New Guinea.

On the other hand, the book exhibits mastery that reminds me why I love literature. In the end, you are left to draw your own conclusions about Fen’s actions and future. There is shock and a final detail (button, blue thread) that wedges the story into your heart even though you might be on guard. I found the novel sentimental and sometimes irritating, but once it was finished I was touched deeply enough to reconsider my scepticism. Maybe I just need to dive deeper into literature & the lives of others, fictional or not, to stretch my imagination and cultivate compassion?

I’d say the best thing about the book is that it makes me want to read more books. Nell’s hunger for understanding is contagious. And then there is Lily King’s ability to transport the reader to a hut in Papua New Guinea. This has inspired me to tackle a 50 book challenge for 2015 because if every book moves me as much as Euphoria, I’ll be transformed, transfixed, and transported all year long.

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LibraryThing member kaitanya64

Pretty good, probably better if you know less rather than more about the history of anthropology. Three young anthropologists, a husband and wife team and a single man, meet "in the field" in New Guinea in the 1930's. While trying to decipher that "grand scheme" of human cultures and thereby gain

fame and advancement, the three, of course, learn more about themselves. Well told, but not terribly deep. Reinforces my view that most early anthropologists were basically narcissistic jerks most of the time and only occasionally actually concerned with the real people who were their "study subjects."

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LibraryThing member bcquinnsmom

basically, it's a 3.2/3.3

This is a real-world book group read, and I picked it because of its discussion potential. Unlike everyone else that seems to have been blown away by this novel, I didn't love it. What I did like was its focus on perspective and the idea, as espoused by one of the

characters in this book, that "You don’t always see how much other people are shaping you.” Here this applies not only to each of the individual lives of the three main characters (successful and famous Nell Stone, loosely based on Margaret Mead, her husband Fen, and the man whose story this book truly belongs to, Andrew Bankson) but also to the cultures they are studying first hand. It also has relevance on horrific events that happened later during World War II, which is really outside of the time of this novel (1930s) but which has its roots among these three people. I will admit to being totally sucked into this book for various reasons, but then came the last 57 or so pages, when in my opinion, things fell apart royally. From page 199 on, I thought the novel sort of moved into the melodrama zone beginning with Fen acting on his desperate desire to achieve some sort of lasting fame on his own with no thought at all to the consequences of his actions, and that was enough to tone down my enthusiasm; well that, and the fact that if an author's going to give us a disguised version of someone who is so well known, taking the kind of liberties she did with reality just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I get that in the midst of several 4- and 5-star reviews I'm once again that fish swimming upstream here, but well, I can't help it.

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LibraryThing member michigantrumpet

There is a genre of novels recently popular for portraying the lives of real life women married to famous accomplished men. Tales about the wives of Ernest Hemingway, Frank Lloyd Wright and Chrles Lindberg come readily to mind. "Euphoria" turns this trope on its head by writing -- loosely-- about

the husbands of a more famous wife, in this case, the second and soon to be third husbands of anthropologist Margaret Mead. I enjoyed several aspects of the book, including the discussions of different approaches to anthropological read each in the nascency of the field. To what extent can the scientist herself into a society without actually changing that which is being studied? How much do one's own preconceptions color one's findings? This was a fast read and I was quite taken by surprise by the ending.

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LibraryThing member konastories

Joy's review: Well, most of our fiction book group liked this story about a love triangle between three anthropologists in Papua New Guinea in the 1930's. However, I found it pretty forgettable and not very interesting. All the characters were stereotypes with the exception of one native character.

Writing was ok, but dull. In summary: meh.

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LibraryThing member KelMunger

In Lily King’s Euphoria (Atlantic Monthly Press, $25), married anthropologists Nell and Fen are working in Papua New Guinea, and their marriage is in trouble. Along comes emotionally tortured British anthropologist Bankson—and both Nell and her husband are interested in him, in all sorts of

ways. In addition to being a rather thinly veiled fictionalization of renowned anthropologist Margaret Mead’s segue from first to second husband after her 1928 publication of Coming of Age in Samoa, Euphoria also takes a close look at what the practice of anthropology (and the careers of anthropologists) do to the cultures under study. This engrossing novel, King’s fourth, illuminates the best and worst of love among intellectual giants, while never allowing us to forget the consequences of intellectual ambition.

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LibraryThing member Whisper1

What a wonderful book! It is difficult to write a review because matching words to feelings is a challenge.

This is a novel, a fictional rendition of Margaret Meade's many wonderful accomplishments in anthropology. The names of characters are fictionalized as well as the names of the locations and

tribes. However, that does not take away from the marvel of this award winning book. Noted as one of the top ten books in 2014 by the New York Times, it certainly deserves many accolades.

Basically, I thought of all the challenges faced learning about the customs and traditions of cultures so very different from ours. The book includes a love triangle between the female anthropologist and her growing love of another anthropologist who was not her husband.

Read this book if you can. I highly recommend it!

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LibraryThing member greeniezona

Honestly, I will die mad about this book.

I remember all the buzz around this book when it first came out. A fictionalized story of an anthropological love triangle inspired by the life of Margaret Mead, a woman I had always meant to learn more about. Eventually, I bought a used copy somewhere and

finally I picked it up for pride month because the cover claims an actual love triangle and it is sometimes tagged lgbtqia+.

I was deeply into this. The writing is so atmospheric and the ideas about the subjectivity of anthropology interesting and the acute differences in cultures in such a tiny region fascinating. There were a few little things that annoyed me along the way, but it was easy to sweep them aside as I devoured this story.

I stayed all in until the last ten pages, and then I wanted to throw the book across the room and burn it in a fire.

Listen. I could go on and on about this book, but my main objection is this: Why? Why kill off Nell? And in such an ambiguous way that could have either been pregnancy complications or domestic violence, both heavily implied, because HER DEATH DOESN'T EVEN HAPPEN ONSCREEN. It is no longer the story of Nell/Margaret, genius anthropologist, it is the story of broody Bankson and his melancholy after losing her. Why make that choice? If this is "inspired by events in the life of Margaret Mead," why rob her of her long career, becoming a legend in her field? Her remarriage and raising a child? Why turn it all into another story of man being threatened by a woman's success and then LET THAT MAN WIN?

As a smaller aside, I am also annoyed that there is this throwaway comment that Nell had to learn words for 16 genders, then this is never referred to again and the rest of the observations of that culture are all "men this, women that."

I know so many people have loved this book, and up until the end I understood. So your mileage may certainly vary. But I am still mad. Big mad.

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LibraryThing member JJbooklvr

Another one of those books I would not have picked up on my own. I read it for my March book discussion groups.

The author fictionalized the meeting of Margaret Mead, Reo Fortune (Mead’s husband at the time), and Gregory Bateson (Mead’s husband after Fortune). The names have been changed, but a

tremendous amount of research shows through of what actually happened in the Territory of New Guinea in 1933 while the three of them were doing anthropological research.

A rather thin book, but with surprising depth and packed with many topics to discuss should make it a good book discussion choice. Readers interested in the early days of anthropological research will also enjoy the book.

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LibraryThing member anitatally

This book was a good read, but I don't know how it ranked as one of the top 10 books of 2014. Maybe I missed something.

LibraryThing member Limelite

Conrad plunged into The Heart of Darkness, Kingsolver inserted calamitous missionaries, wielding The Poisonwood Bible into post-colonial Congo, and King releases the high emotions and competing intellects of three anthropologists into exotic New Guinea where they are doomed to know only momentary

Euphoria.

Good things seldom happen when temperate people submerge themselves in alien equatorial jungles, where sensuality slowly boils until it produces an intolerable torrid atmosphere where passions fulminate in violence.

Dirt, sweat, physical and emotional pain, illness, greed, jealousy, and offended cultures are ugly things. Yet, King's writing is beautiful, ethereal, and luminous in telling us about them. She is a master story teller, constructionist, and wielder of language. This novel is sure to remain a classic among the tales of adventure leavened by inward personal journeys into the dark, unexplored, and primitive recesses of place and psyche.

Euphoria, the most elusive desirable emotion, is a novel whose major theme is the elusiveness of our desires. Don't let this novel elude you.

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LibraryThing member Meredy

Six-word review: Love triangle threatens anthropological research expedition.

Extended review:

A lonely anthropologist conducting research in New Guinea encounters a pair of fellow researchers, a recently married couple at work on separate projects among the indigenous tribes. Inevitably he is

attracted to the wife, and a dangerous triangle is the result. The husband, meanwhile, envious of his spouse's academic success, resolves to distinguish himself professionally by collecting a uniquely valuable artifact regardless of the risk it entails.

Loosely based on the story of famed anthropologist Margaret Mead and her second and third husbands, Euphoria evokes the passionate intensity with which dedicated scientists pursue knowledge in their field. At the same time it chronicles the growth of an irresistible attraction and the dissolution of the relationship that it displaces. The interweaving of the personal with the professional spotlights the way a shared commitment to mastery in a field of learning links both minds and hearts.

King skillfully seeds the storyline with clues that enable us to go beyond conjecture in the end. Several other novels that I've read in the past year or so, notably Her (Harriet Lane), have likewise accomplished the admirable feat of giving us an inexplicit outcome for which we nevertheless have enough information to piece it together. That moment of realization packs a considerably greater punch than would a literal conclusion.

For all that, I'm disappointed to say that I just didn't like this book very much. None of the principal characters struck me as someone I'd like to know. I didn't much care for the way any of them behaved. My sympathies tended to be with the people they were there to study, and in all cases I thought they'd have been better off if left alone. I can't say that the author discourages this view; but it does detract from my ability to relate warmly to the trio. Rather, I'm inclined to see them as specimens of their own tribe and consider their customs, conventions, and behaviors dispassionately without wanting to adopt them myself.

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LibraryThing member snash

A love triangle among anthropologists studying primitive tribes in New Guinea excellently done. The back drop allows for placing their actions and culture under an analytical light.

LibraryThing member rmckeown

Back in middle school days, I loved reading about archaeology, paleontology, and anthropology. My favorite book then was Gods, Graves, and Scholars, an interesting look at some notable archaeological digs, including the Tomb of Tutankhamun and ancient Troy. When I was in college, I took an

anthropology course as an elective, and devoured numerous monographs on disparate cultures around the globe. Recently a friend recommended Euphoria by Lily King, which is a fictionalized account of Margaret Mead’s adventures in New Guinea. Ah, the embers of my old passion flamed in my find.

King has written three novels before Euphoria, including The English Teacher, which I already own. She has won several awards, including named as an alternate for the PEN/Hemingway Award. She has also gathered several awards from her home state of Maine, where she currently resides.

Euphoria is the story of three anthropologists studying tribes in New Guinea. Fen is the husband of Nell (an allegorical Margaret Mead), and Andrew Bankson is a young anthropologist trying to discover an unknown tribe to make his name. King plays with some of the facts of Mead’s life, in order to spin a love story of an unusual nature.

I found the early chapters a bit confusing until I worked out who was whom, and the exact relationships between Fen and Nell, Fen and Bateson, and Nell and Bateson. In real life, Margaret marries Gregory Bateson (Bankson in the novel), and she dies in New York City in 1978. Mead won the Kalinga Prize, given by UNESCO for the popularization of science among lay people.

King really did an exceptional job of capturing the thoughts of Nell as she explores the peoples of the New Guinea jungles. In this passage, King writes the diary of Nell. “I found a language teacher. Karu. He knows some pidgin from a childhood spent near the patrol station in Ambunti. Thanks to him my lexicon has over 1,000 words in it now & I quiz myself morning & night though part of me wishes I could have more time without the language. There is such careful mutual observing that goes on without it. My new friend Malun took me today to a woman’s house where they were weaving & repairing fishing nets and we sat with her pregnant daughter Sali & Sali’s paternal aunt & the aunt’s four grown daughters. I am learning the chopped rhythm of their talk, the sound of their laughter, the cant of their heads. I can feel the relationships, the likes & dislikes in the room in a way I never could if I could speak. You don’t realize how language actually interferes with communication until you don’t have it, how it gets in the way like an over-dominant sense. You have to pay much more attention to everything else when you can’t understand the words. Once comprehension comes, so much else falls away. You then rely on their words, and words aren’t always the most reliable thing” (79).

The one thing which disturbed me about the book – especially in light of the plunder of precious artifacts in the Middle East – was the way some of these people manipulated and even stole artifacts from the tribes to sell to museums. I am glad I ignored the Rule of 50 in Euphoria by Lily King. 5 stars.

--Chiron, 11/17/15

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LibraryThing member Youngrunner

Intrigued by the subject matter and era of the story: anthropologists in New Guineau studying tribes and history of the area, love tryst as well. I anticipated that more would occur, I never got as swept up in the story as I wanted.

LibraryThing member ohernaes

Three anthropologists in the jungle. Love triangle. Quite boring.

LibraryThing member jayhiker

Immediately, this book threw me into an open boat speeding down a remote New Guinea river...and I didn't want to come back. Wished it were double the 340 pages but that could have altered its perfect symmetry. Lily King can really write.

LibraryThing member zzarm

Fascinating fictionalized exploration of the native tribes of Papua, New Guinea

LibraryThing member chrisblocker

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.

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LibraryThing member cabockwrites

Wondrous historical novel. Evocative. Set largely in New Guinea right before World War II, it's the story of a romantic triangle of anthropologists. If you've read anything about this touted novel, you'll know it was inspired by Margaret Mead but the characters and the setting are so rich and deep,

it didn't matter to this reader that it was Mead because it truly became Nell, Fen and Bankson's story.

What I loved about this book:
the three different sections -- told in first person, third and in diary notes

the description of how and why we love, women loving men, women loving women, and the love and desire for children (I'm trying not to give any spoilers here).

the passion for their work and how it informs and corrupts, in some cases, the three characters

the richness of the setting and how the write uses the language to describe what is exotic and what is every day. Almost at random, here's an example: "Through the windscreen I had a last look at the sea, which was rumpled and agitated, a thick muscle that would hold on tight to everything it swallowed." I don't think I will ever look at the sea again in the same way.

This is a short novel, just 254 pages in hardcover (and a gorgeous cover to the hardcover and thick pages and edges -- a beautiful book to hold), and at the end, my one criticism, I wanted it to go on.

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LibraryThing member sleahey

It's clear earlyon thatthe three anthropologists will constitute a love triangle and that it will end badly. The narrative switches points of view and includes journal entries and letters to round out the character development. The study of indigenous tribes and descriptions of their customs that

seem so alien to Westerners are juxtaposed with observations of the behaviors of the three main characters. Fascinating for the sense of place, the glimpse into the field of anthropology in the 1930's, and the relationships of the three primary characters.

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LibraryThing member maryreinert

I remember reading a children's biography of Margaret Mead many years ago and like Nell Stone "when other girls were wishing for ponies or roller skates, she wished for a band of gypsies to climb up into her window and take her away with them to teach her their language and their customs." Nell

Stone, roughly based on Margaret Mead, is now in the foreign and exotic jungles of New Guinea with her explorer husband, Fen. Nell has already published a book about her exploits and has received acclaim for presenting a new and more subjective view of other cultures. In the 1930's that was possible for a woman to do, but the interpersonal relations between husband and wife were rarely as progressive.

Fen, jealous of Nell, takes a different approach to life in the jungle. Along comes Bankson, another anthropologist. Relationships become even more complicated.

This is a well-written novel of cultural differences, a look at the intimate relations between a man whose goals are very different than those of his wife, and how one man's ego can have a vast affect on an entire people.

Along with this title, I would recommend Peter Matthiesen's "At Play in the Field of the Lord" another look into the clash of western civilization into the jungles of South America.

The reason for 4 stars rather than 5 is that I found it a bit confusing to follow at first. Character development took a while.

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