Euphoria

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.

I really liked this book, while all the while wishing it was double the length, filled with more details, and possibly written by someone like W. Somerset Maugham, just so I could love it more. It's the story of 3 anthropologists, re-imaging the time of Margaret Mead, Reo Fortune and Gregory Bateson in New Guinea in the early 1930ies. Part love story, part anthropology adventures.

The basis is all there - charming interesting characters, united in their passion for anthropology, pulling the reader into their fascination for uncovering unknown cultures... and then there's the jungle and its humidity and bugs and dangers, plus a love triangle to spice it all up. All of these things are great, I just needed more of it. So I would know the characters better and could appreciate all the emotional moments deeper. Hear more of Nell's methods for getting the tribes to trust her, understand more of Fen's charm and jealousy, and spend more time with Bankson despair and longing. Dig deeper into those polyamorous notes that emerged mid-way and then disappeared.