Girls, I Was Not Too Euphoric Over This One!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                This review may sound like me bitching, but believe me, I am not.  I am just being honest.

                                 So many people had recommended this title to me. It was one of the New York Times Five Best Works Of Fiction for 2014.  The blurbs I read compared it to "Heart Of Darkness,"
"The Luminaries," and "Gravity's Rainbow."  My God!, I thought.  I am going to be in for the reading experience of the year.

                                     Alas.

                                     Schuyler Fenwick is one of the most despicable characters I have come across. His malevolence is unreeled slowly, but I knew it was lurking; I just did not know how.  Likewise, Andrew Bankson is one of the most engaging characters.  I was so glad the novel is told from his viewpoint. One of the more moving parts is his chronicling of how the war  (WWI) impacted on his family.

                                        I simply could not stand Nell Stone, a fictionalized version of Margaret Mead, who was so goddamned ugly herself, it is a wonder how she found anyone. The thought of her having sex, let alone a man, unless he were equally ugly, being attracted to her, repulses me.  Lily King is trying to create a character torn by her inner independence and still a need to conform to the times; ie; marriage or motherhood. I could  care less. Nell/Margaret, be your own woman.  In the end, it proved to be your legacy, anyway.

                                          There, I am done with the bitching.

                                           The book's real problem is that she is trying to cover too much; if ever a book needed to be longer, this was it.  I was more interested in the cultural rituals and ceremonies of the tribes visited, which is when King is at her literary best, than I was in the characters from so-called Civilization.  Sometimes I felt like I was reading H.R. Haggard, then it morphed into Barbara Cartland.

                                             Well, maybe not Cartland.  More like Barbara Kingsolver, whom a neighbor of mine who had read this, compared King to. Except I feel if Kingsolver had written the book, it would have been better.  I wish she had.

                                                "Euphoria" did not lift me, as a reader. It left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

                                                   Thank God for Listerine, darlings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!