Why this book:  Recommended by a good friend.

My impressions:  Euphoria is short, powerful, engrossing.  It is a good read, about very interesting people in a fascinating setting.  And it is very well crafted – a bit confusing at the very beginning, but like many good books, it quickly comes together and picks up momentum.  I finished it in just a few days – easy to get into, and stay into.  Bottom line: I really liked this book –  it didn’t move me as much as The Signature of All Things, but it was considerably shorter, and the story covered a shorter period – but powerfully so.

Loosely based on an experience of Margaret Meade in the 1930’s, it is the story of a relationship between a married pair of anthropologists living in a very remote and “primitive” village in New Guinea, and a 3^rd anthropologist living in a separate village, a few hours away by boat.  The central characters are the woman anthropologist and the other man, who falls in love with her.  Much of the story is from the first person perspective of the 3rd anthropologist – who I found to be compelling and believable in how he struggled with loneliness, his love for his married colleague, his antipathy for her husband, and his struggle with the discipline required to do his work.  The story explores not only the relationship between these three anthropologists to each other, but also to the cultures they are studying in remote hunter-gatherer societies in New Guinea.

They are westerners who have injected themselves into these villages, ostensibly only to study and understand them, but their presence and avid engagement also impacted them –for good and otherwise.   This is a theme that is strongly reminiscent of Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe and The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. We learn about the cultures our three anthropologists are studying, as we also become engaged in the dynamics between the husband and wife and our protagonist – the 3^rd anthropologist.  There is good, there is evil, there is ambition and passion, there is love and frustration – there is joy and there is sadness.  All encapsulated in a relatively short, well-written book, taking place in a fascinating part of the world, so very different from that in which most of us live.   A great read and a great book for a reading group.