Ratings28
Average rating3.9
A New York Times Bestseller Winner of the 2014 Kirkus Prize Winner of the 2014 New England Book Award for Fiction A Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award A Best Book of the Year for: New York Times Book Review, Time, NPR, Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, Newsday, Vogue, New York Magazine, Seattle Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, The Guardian, Kirkus Reviews, Amazon, Publishers Weekly, Our Man in Boston, Oprah.com, Salon Euphoria is Lily King’s nationally bestselling breakout novel of three young, gifted anthropologists of the ‘30’s caught in a passionate love triangle that threatens their bonds, their careers, and, ultimately, their lives. Inspired by events in the life of revolutionary anthropologist Margaret Mead, Euphoria is "dazzling ... suspenseful ... brilliant...an exhilarating novel.”—Boston Globe
Reviews with the most likes.
A powerful opening, and it just kept getting better. It was exquisite from the first page, and upon finishing I wanted to start right back on it to enjoy the writing without the suspense and to spend more time with the characters.
Smart, competent characters; a loathsome villain; believable relationships among them. Sex positivity. Thoughtful exploration of cultural norms (maybe a tad heavyhanded, but forgivably so). Constant addressing of the difficulty of communicating. Strong female roles. Frank no-BS treatment of grief, suicide, loneliness. Science positivity, with genuine-feeling depiction of the euphoria of learning. Basically, a lot of my hot buttons in one tidy package.
Masterful writing: King uses dialog effectively, with the shortcuts, collisions, topic shifts that make up realistic conversations. She gives us sensitive insights into the characters' head spaces. There's one narrative element I found brilliant: after the first (third-person omniscient) chapter, the story shifts to first-person. The smitten male narrator describes glances and unspoken subtexts that suggest his attraction is mutual, and the reader becomes increasingly uncomfortable about the narrator's reliability—we men do have an unsettling tendency to misinterpret attention from women. King eventually addresses this tension, but read for yourself to learn how.
One of the few times I wished a book was longer, not because it was well-written, but because it seemed like it ended just as I was starting to get into the story and the characters. It's said to be loosely based on Margaret Mead, but I don't know enough about her to compare the events in this book to those in her life.
This was excellent. My only real quibble is that I wanted more of Nell's voice and less of Bateson's. We have enough male voices in this world. I want more female. Still I loved reading it and dragged the last 50 or so pages out, so I could stay with it longer.