SOLSTICEPOINT
| TOP 10 BOOKS TO READ |
|
Books chosen for their staying power. Read any of these and you may think about them for weeks, months or even years afterwards. BOOK # 9 TOP 10 BOOKS Euphoria by Lily King Classification: Fiction, adventure, Margaret Meade, Winner of the 2014 Kirkus Prize and Winner of the 2014 New England Book Award for Fiction “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.” Quote from Euphoria In the 1930’s anthropology was in its infancy and the Solomon Island tribes were untouched by civilization. The author illuminates what it must have been like to experience firsthand a culture untouched by newspapers and to build a body of work in an unexplored and undefined science. Inspired by the life of trailblazer Margaret Meade, this novel centers on an American anthropologist in the 1930’s who studies natives in Papua New Guinea with her Australian husband. Another anthropologist from England encourages them to remain in the area although they are beaten down by more than a year of study during which they were beset by fevers, diseases and unhealthy living conditions. The husband is somewhat jealous of his wife’s fame and successful book so he takes unnecessary risks to secretly gather data for his own book. As they each explore different tribal cultures and occasionally compare notes a love triangle develops. One tribe they study is dangerous and violent while another one is dominated by women in positions of power. The limitations they encounter due to the language barrier often limit their true understanding of the tribe’s social, religious and cultural concepts. Each anthropologist has his or her own viewpoint drawn from their own differing cultures and backgrounds so although they have vowed to be objective and scientific their unique perspectives mold their observations.
|