“You don’t realise how language actually interferes with communication until you don’t have it, how it gets in the way like an overdominant sense.”
Margaret Mead was an incredible woman who lived an unconventional life, and pioneered what we today call anthropology; she rocketed the science into the public eye from academic obscurity and disinterest. Euphoria, by Lily King, is partly based on Mead’s time with native tribes near the Sepik River in New Guinea, and her turbulent romantic life there. In this novel, three scientists, one suicidal and the other two damaged in more subtle ways, are trying to unravel the cultures of a number of tribes in New Guinea while battling their own lust, anger, and depression.
Primal human urges are the centre-point of this story and the novel attempts to tackle some big themes, such as what it means to be a human, and how far Western society has really been able to move past what was often considered “primitive” morality systems. This a vivid and often engrossing tale, too, with an intense sexuality and the threat of violence constantly hovering over the events depicted. Unfortunately, King’s interesting observations about the nature of societies are stapled onto a love triangle which feels far more generic yet prominent than the ideas surrounding it.
The writing has some sentences which crackle with real inspiration, but also a number of tics that keep it from being truly stellar. For instance, King has an irritating tendency towards repetition at the end of her sentences, a stylistic flourish that comes across as clunky rather than poetic.
The few moments we spend with tribal characters overshadow the main cast. When anthropology and its capacity to give insight into human nature is at the forefront, King shines; ironically, however, when it comes to exploring individual characters rather than society as a whole, things get iffy.
The characters are multifaceted and engaging to watch bounce off each other. King excels at witty dialogue, and makes you buy a burgeoning romance and another which is on the decline. There are, however, melodramatically tragic back-stories which may as well have had “Freudian excuse” in bold red letters across the pages where they were being explored. It’s not that these back-stories to be unrealistically tragic; in fact, they’re carefully modelled on Mead and company’s biographies. It’s the way they are brought up as a way to explain a character’s actions rather than to help us understand them better. There’s no subtext here, just text, and we are informed how their histories have damaged the people we are reading about rather than being allowed to figure them out for ourselves. This gave a soap opera tinge to an otherwise carefully put together story, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but due to the focus it take this gives Euphoria a tonal inconsistency due to the more fascinating and mostly restrained sections with the native tribes.
There are a number of moments where we are given hints, or outright told, what happens after these characters leave the jungle, and so the ending feels incomplete and anti-climatic due to a rather abrupt ending that left a large number of questions unanswered. Still, there were some vivid descriptions and interesting character dynamics on display in Euphoria. Just don’t expect to come away completely satisfied.
Some Ferrett Notes 