Lily King

This is about Casey, an aspiring novelist who works as a waitress in Boston. Her mother has recently died, so at the beginning of the novel she is consumed by grief and anxiety. The novel explores her relationships with a few potential lovers, both of whom are also writers.

King's writing is delightful. Despite how depressing Casey's situation is, and despite the fact that there isn't a lot of action in the book, the characters all feel so real that this book is hard to put down. The end was a little unsatisfying to me - it seemed a bit sudden and too tidy, but all in all, this is an enjoyable read about the power of friendship and love to heal wounds, and about the importance of the art of writing.… (mer)

Sex on the Sepik

Loosely based on the life of American anthropologist Margaret Mead during her New Guinea studies of tribes on the Sepik River in New Guinea, this book was a slow read.

Although it includes some parts of Mead’s life, only one other real life character makes an appearance - fictionalized “Gregory Bateson” who whose name is that old Mead’s real-life second husband, but who is her lover in the book.

There is a third major character in the book - a seedy Australian who is the fictional husband. The blending of two men into one is confusing, but eventually I suspended belief and just went with it.

The novel draws on the views held by skeptics, that Mead imagined and depicted various tribal rituals according to her love life at the time. rather than by objective observation.

There are a couple of weird episodes that don’t ring true in Euphoria. One is that Mead (Nell in the novel) collaborates with her husband to form a grid depicting cultural norms by geographic regions. This supposed grid is used in WW2 by the allied and also by the Nazis. During the collaboration the lover (her husband in real life) muses that if they had known that WW2 was about to break out in Europe, maybe the war could have been averted. All a bit too much to take seriously.

The other was the description of the threesome’s trip to Sydney pre WW2. I was born in Australia post WW2 and King’s description is way off - a Sydney of the 1970s.

Yes it’s a piece of fiction, but in order to go with fiction based on historical events, the knowledgeable reader needs to be able to believe while reading.

I did enjoy Simon Vance reading in an Australian accent - the lover is an Aussie. Not a bad job, Mr Vance!

The book cover many, too many areas I think. Some of them are -
-anthropology
- transvestitism as a ritual to humiliate men
- lost love
- male chauvinism
- hints of domestic violence
- colonialism
- sociology
- threesomes
- gender
- linguistics
- romance
- grie
- New Guinea (now Papúa New Guinea)
and more.… (mer)