Friday, October 23, 2015

2015 book 249

Lily King's Euphoria
King's latest (after Father of the Rain and others) is very, very heavily inspired by the life of famed anthropologist Margaret Mead, and particularly an interlude in her life where she and her second husband encountered the man who would become her third husband--in real life, anyway. A lot of the agency is taken away from the Mead character here, since it's all narrated by the man who falls for her as they all investigate various tribes in New Guinea, and we only get a few brief diary entries from her perspective. Or maybe the way King changed the story just pissed me off and that has colored my perspective on the earlier sections. I did quite like this until the end--the love triangle is interesting, as is the husband's jealousy of her professional success--but I really don't see why King made the narrative choices she did when the real story is so much more colorful and satisfying. She does spent a bit of time opining on the nature of tragedy, which actually makes me madder about how this ended, since it doesn't rise to that level. UGH. B/B+?

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