Lily King is the author of the novels The Pleasing
Hour, The English Teacher, and Father of the
Rain, a New York Times Editor's Choice and winner of the
New England Book Award for Fiction. King is the recipient of a
Whiting Writers' Award and the Maine Fiction Award twice. She lives
with her husband and children in Maine.
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 New York Times Book Review 10 Best Books of 2014;
TIME Top 10 Fiction Books of 2014; New York Times Book
Review 100 Notable Books of 2014; NPR Best Books of 2014;
Entertainment Weekly's 10 Best Fiction Books of 2014;
Washington Post Top 50 Fiction Books of 2014; Kirkus
Best of 2014; Amazon 100 Best of 2014 #16; Publishers Weekly
Best Fiction Books of 2014; Our Man in Boston's Best of 2014;
Oprah.com 15 Must Reads of 2014; Buzzfeed 32 Most Beautiful Book
Covers of 2014; A Vogue Top 10 Book of 2014; A New
York magazine Best Book of the Year; Seattle Times Top
Books of 2014; San Francisco Chronicle Top 10 Books of 2014
"Euphoria is a meticulously researched homage to Mead's
restless mind and a considered portrait of Western anthropology in
its primitivist heyday. It's also a taut, witty, fiercely
intelligent tale of competing egos and desires in a landscape of
exotic menace--a love triangle in extremis...The steam the book
emits is as much intellectual as erotic...and King's signal
achievement may be to have created satisfying drama out of a quest
for interpretive insight...King is brilliant on the moral
contradictions that propelled anthropological encounters with
remote tribes...In King's exquisite book, desire--for knowledge,
fame, another person--is only fleetingly rewarded."--Emily Eakin,
New York Times Book Review (cover review) "It's refreshing
to see the world's most famous anthropologist brought down to human
scale and placed at the center of this svelte new book by Lily
King. "Euphoria" is King's first work of historical fiction. For
this dramatic new venture, she retains all the fine qualities that
made her three previous novels insightful and absorbing, but now
she's working on top of a vast body of scholarly work and public
knowledge. And yet "Euphoria" is also clearly the result of
ferocious restraint; King has resisted the temptation to lard her
book with the fruits of her research. Poetic in its compression and
efficiency, "Euphoria" presumes some familiarity with Mead's
biography for context and background, and yet it also deviates from
that history in promiscuous ways...King keeps the novel focused
tightly on her three scientists, which makes the glimpses we catch
of their New Guinea subjects all the more arresting...Although King
has always written coolly about intense emotions, here she captures
the amber of one man's exquisite longing for a woman who changed
the way we look at ourselves."--Ron Charles, Washington Post
"Atmospheric and sensual, with startling images throughout,
Euphoria is an intellectually stimulating tour de
force."--NPR.com "This novel is as concentrated as orchid food,
packing as much narrative power and intellectual energy into its
250 pages as novels triple its size."
--Marion Winik, Newsday "Euphoria is at once romantic,
exotic, informative, and entertaining."-- Reader's Digest
summer reading list) "It's smart and steamy and like the best
historical fiction, it made me want to read about Mead."--USA
Today's Summer's Hottest Titles "This year's winner Book I Read
In One Sitting Because I happened to Read The First Page...a novel
of ideas and also a novel of emotions: the titular one but also
envy, hubris, despair, and above all desire--how liberating or
scandalous it can be, how linked to intellect, how
dictatorial."--Kathryn Schulz, New York, Best Books of the
Year "King reveals a startlingly vulnerable side to Mead,
suggesting an elegant parallel between novelist and archeologist:
In scrutinizing the lives of others, we discover
ourselves."--Vogue Top 10 Books of 2014 "Enthralling . . .
From Conrad to Kingsolver, the misdeeds of Westerners have inspired
their own literary subgenre, and in King's insightful, romantic
addition, the work of novelist and anthropologist find resonant
parallel: In the beauty and cruelty of others, we discover our
own."--Vogue "You need know not one thing about 1930s
cultural anthropology, or about the late, controversial
anthropologists Margaret Mead and Reo Fortune and Gregory Bateson
(Mead's second and third husbands) to delight in King's novel. Her
superb coup is to have imagined a story loosely founded on the
intertwined lives of the three that instantly becomes its own,
thrilling saga."--San Francisco Chronicle, Top 10 Books of
2014 "King's superb coup is to have imagined a story loosely
founded on the intertwined lives of the above three that instantly
becomes its own, thrilling saga - while provoking a detective's
curiosity about its sources....King builds an intense, seductive,
sexual and intellectual tension among the three: This taut, fraught
triangulation is the novel's driving force. There are so many
exhilarating elements to savor in Euphoria. It moves fast.
It's grit-in-your-teeth sensuous. The New Guinean bush and its
peoples - their concerns, their ordeals - confront us with fierce,
tangible exactness, with dignity and wit. So do the vagaries of
anthropological theories, rivalries, politics. Observations are
unfailingly acute, and the book is packed with them....It's a
brave, glorious set piece. By the end of Euphoria, this
reader sighed with wistful satisfaction, wishing the book would go
on. Brava to Lily King."--Joan Frank, San Francisco
Chronicle "It's the rare novel of ideas that devours its
readers' attention. More often, as with Eleanor Catton's The
Luminaries or Gravity's Rainbow, we work our way through
these books carefully and with frequent pauses, rather than gulping
them down in long, thirsty drafts. It's not a literary form known
for its great romances, either, although of course love and sex
play a role in most fictional characters' lives. Lily King's
Euphoria, a shortish novel based on a period in the life of
pioneering anthropologist Margaret Mead, is an exception. At its
center is a romantic triangle, and it tells a story that begs to be
consumed in one or two luxurious binges...King is a sinewy,
disciplined writer who wisely avoids the temptation to evoke the
overwhelming physicality of the jungle (the heat, the steam, the
bugs) by generating correspondingly lush thickets of language. Her
story...sticks close to the interlocking bonds that give the novel
its tensile power."--Laura Miller, Salon "Lily King has
built her reputation as a gifted novelist steadily over three
books. Her fourth, Euphoria--a smart, sexy, concise work
inspired by anthropologist Margaret Mead--should solidify the
critical approval and bring her a host of new
readers."--Cleveland Plain Dealer "Among the plethora of
mysteries and assorted fiction that flow from Maine, it's a rare
novel that rises to the level of Euphoria...a fascinating,
multi-layered character study of people under duress....the
writing...sweeps you away....Put Euphoria in your book bag
for those trips to the beach. You'll be glad you did."--Portland
Herald Press Masterful...Euphoria begins so deep in the
action that the reader is captured on Page 1... a thrilling and
beautifully composed novel...A great novelist is like an
anthropologist, examining what humans do by habit and custom. King
excels in creating vignettes from Nell's fieldwork as well as from
the bitter conversation of the three love-torn collaborators,
making the familiar strange and the strange acceptable. This is a
riveting and provocative novel, absolutely first-rate."--Seattle
Times "Exciting...a wonderfully vivid and perceptive
tale...King's prose sparkles...The upriver experiences of her
characters feel thoroughly authentic --fascinating, uncomfortable,
always dangerous, sometimes even euphoric."--Minneapolis Star
Tribune "Splendid...compelling, intelligent...filled with
searing shocks...breaks the heart."--Tampa Bay Times "Lily
King has taken this high-octane collaboration and turned it into an
intellectual romance novel...the effect is hallucinatory - this is
a trip of a novel...Hot stuff. In every way."--Book Reporter "A
haunting novel of love, ambition, and
obsession...unforgettable."--AudioFile "Inspired by an event
in the life of Margaret Mead, this novel tells the story of three
young anthropologists in 1930s New Guinea...This three-way
relationship is complex and involving, but even more fascinating is
the depiction of three anthropologists with three entirely diverse
ways of studying another culture...These differences, along with
professional jealousy and sexual tension, propel the story toward
its inevitable conclusion...Recommended for fans of novels about
exploration as myth and about cultural clashes, from Joseph
Conrad's Heart of Darkness to Chinua Achebe's Things Fall
Apart."--Library Journal (starred review) "The love lives
and expeditions of controversial anthropologists Margaret Mead, Reo
Fortune, and Gregory Bateson are fictionalized and richly
reimagined in New England Book Award winner King's (Father of the
Rain) meaty and entrancing fourth book...King's immersive prose
takes center stage. The fascinating descriptions of tribal customs
and rituals, paired with snippets of Nell's journals--as well as
the characters' insatiable appetites for scientific discovery--all
contribute to a thrilling read that, at its end, does indeed feel
like 'the briefest, purest euphoria.'"--Publishers
Weekly(starred review) "Set between the First and Second World
Wars, the story is loosely based on events in the life of Margaret
Mead. There are fascinating looks into other cultures and how they
are studied, and the sacrifices and dangers that go along with it.
This is a powerful story, at once gritty, sensuous, and
captivating."--Booklist "Atmospheric...A small gem,
disturbing and haunting."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"There are some novels that take you by the hand with their lovely
prose alone; there are those that pull you in with sensual
renderings of time and place and a compelling story; and there are
still others that seduce you solely with their subject matter. But
it is a rare novel indeed that does all of the above at once and
with complete artistic mastery. Yet this is precisely what Lily
King has done in her stunningly passionate and gorgeously written
Euphoria. It is simply one of the finest novels I've read in
years, and it puts Lily King firmly in the top rank of our most
accomplished novelists."
-- Andre Dubus III "With Euphoria, Lily King gives us a
searing and absolutely mesmerizing glimpse into 1930's New Guinea,
a world as savage and fascinating as Conrad's Heart of
Darkness, where obsessions rise to a feverish pitch, and three
dangerously entangled anthropologists will never be the same again.
Jaw-droppingly, heart-stoppingly beautiful. I loved this
book."--Paula McLain, author of The Paris Wife "I have come
to expect Lily King's nuanced explorations of the human heart, but
in this novel she pulled me in to the exotic world of a woman
anthropologist working with undiscovered tribes in 1930s New Guinea
and I was totally captivated. Euphoria is a great book! So
great, that I stayed up late to finish it."--Karl Marlantes
"Writers are childlike in their enthusiasm about other writers'
good work. They're thinking: How'd they ever think of that? That's
amazing/beautifully written/true! Imagine all the effort that went
into pulling this off. Could I do something this
original/surprising/moving? I'm always happy to read Lily King, and
I particularly enjoyed reading Euphoria." -Ann Beattie
"Fresh, brilliantly structured, and fully imagined, this novel
radically transforms a story we might have known, as outsiders--but
now experience, though Lily King's great gifts, as if we'd lived
it."
--Andrea Barrett "Lily King delves into the intellectual flights
and passions of three anthropologists - as complex, rivalrous and
brutal as any of the cultures they study. Euphoria is a
brilliantly written book."--Alice Greenway A CBS News "Must-have
titles for your summer reading list"; An O, the Oprah
Magazine, "10 Titles To Pick Up Now"; A Marie Claire
"novel that needs to be in your beach bag"; A USA Today pick for
Summer's Hottest Titles"; A National Geographic Ultimate
Summer #TripLit Reading List; A Boston Globe Summer Reading
Suggestion; A Salon pick for Best Book of the Year (so far); A
St. Louis Post Dispatch "Books to carry on the road this
summer"; Reader's Digest Summer Reading List, An Observer
(UK) Best holiday reads 2014; An Indie Next Pick for June
 |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
