Euphoria: Anthropologists in Love

An anthropologist love triangle in 1930s New Guinea? Lily King's novel Euphoria sounded a bit too soap-opera-ey for me — not exactly a novel in my reading wheelhouse. And so it took me a lot to talk myself into trying it. But the avalanche of accolades (NBCC finalist, NY Times Top 10 book of 2014, bestseller in paperback) and finding a super-cheap, new-condition paperback in a used bookstore finally tilted me over the edge. 

It's a fascinating read loosely based on the life of anthropologist Margaret Mead. In the novel, the Mead character is named Nell — she's recently married to an Australian anthropologist named Fen, who we slowly learn feels threatened in his masculinity by her success. She's published a much-read, if somewhat controversial book, and has become something of a science celebrity. He, however, is an unknown. And while the two seem to work well together, they often come to very different conclusions regarding what they're studying. And this begins to become bothersome for Nell.

When the novel opens, we see them leaving the tribe they'd been studying to attend a Christmas Eve party. There, they meet another somewhat famous anthropologist named Bankson, who has just tried to kill himself by walking into the river with rocks in his pocket. But he was fished out by the natives, and now has a new lease on life. He's desperately lonely, and so he talks Nell and Fen into staying in New Guinea, even recommending a new tribe along the same river for them to study. Nell and Fen again throw themselves into their work, but when Bankson comes to visit to check on their progress, he realizes he's already starting to have strong feelings for Nell. And Nell is becoming more and more disillusioned with her husband and his work ethic. How will the three deal with their difficult feelings for each other, their work, and the tribes they're studying?

This slim, deceptively complex novel takes on some weighty issues in regards to gender relations, cultural relativism, and the balances of "power" in any relationship. The title refers to Nell's moment when she feels like she truly understands the culture of the people she's studying. But she realizes her euphoria is false, because much like in her own relationships, you never really reach an end-point of total understanding. Relationships are constantly evolving.

King handles the complexities and themes of this great novel with a subtle, deft hand, trusting her reader to puzzle them out for him or herself. And that's ultimately why I enjoyed it — it's a really smart book that challenges its readers to give it more than just cursory thought. 

Two Great Recent Chicago-Set Novels

Chicago-set novels are a bone fide literary Kryptonite for me — I can't resist 'em. Here are two great recent ones.

The Making Of Zombie Wars, by Aleksander Hemon
Have you ever read a Jonathan Tropper or other dude-lit novel, and thought, "Hmm, this is pretty good, but what it needs is more graphic sex and violence"? Well, here you go! Chicagoan Hemon gives us this goofy tale of a 33-year-old struggling screenwriter named Joshua Levin. Our boy Josh gets himself into hot water with his beautiful, kinky, way-out-of-his league lady Kimmy when he can't resist the charms of a beautiful Bosnian woman named Ana, a student in the English as a Second Language night class he teaches.

Joshua participates in a screenwriting workshop, and though he has many ideas for screenplays, he never finishes any of them ... that is until a great idea for a movie about zombies occurs to him. It's spring 2003, we've just invaded Iraq, and war is fresh in the hearts and minds of everyone. Part of the idea of the novel is to draw a silly parallel between art and life by showing that we dumb humans are more or less like zombies, only responding to our urges of the flesh (like sex and violence). And for Joshua, the irony here is that the only thing that can elevate him above his current zombie-esque urges is his art about zombies who can't resist their own urges.

It's a deceptively funny novel that includes a samurai-sword-wielding, Guns'N'Roses-listening, post-smoking, Desert Storm veteran named Stagger, cock rings and handcuffs, and Bosnian toughs named Esko and Bega who are constant thorns in Joshua's side.

Don't take this novel too seriously, and I think you'll dig it. It's a quick, light read with plenty of laugh-out-loud absurdity.

The Ghost Network, by Catie Disabato
This intricate debut thriller is a mixture of conspiracy theory, esoteric history and philosophy (both of Chicago and in general), and commentary on celebrity and pop culture. 

The set-up here is that a writer named Catie Disabato is publishing (with her own notes) a previously completed manuscript by another journalist name Cyrus Archer. Archer's manuscript is about the disappearance of a pop star named Molly Metropolis and one of her biggest fans' efforts to find her. But only a few months into the search, the fan, whose name is Cait Taer, also disappears — we learn this in the prologue. So what the heck has happened?

Taer's efforts to find Molly Metropolis before her own disappearance involve hooking up (figuratively, and romantically) with Molly's assistant Regina Nix and one of her confidants, Nick Berliner (great names, right?!). She has to delve into the history of the Chicago El, the faux-profound ramblings she finds in Molly Metropolis's journal, and a mysterious (and real) philosophical movement called Situationism. 

The cool thing about this novel is Chicago is very prominent — Cait and Regina spend tons of time just walking the streets, and we get to see a lot of great Chicago landmarks and neighborhoods. But the strength of this novel is its inventiveness, and how it manages to pull so many disparate elements into a what turns into a pretty taut thriller.

How To Tell Toledo From The Night Sky: Tricking Fate

Childhood friends Sally and Bernice have the most noble intentions — they endeavor to raise their children, George and Irene, so that when they will grow up, meet randomly, fall in love, and live happily ever after. It'll be as if they were fated to be together, like two halves of a whole, like symmetrical souls. Of course, when you're trying to trick fate and arrange a marriage over the course of a few decades, even the best laid plans can go awry.

So this attempt to engineer destiny is the set-up for Lydia Netzer's fun, quirky 2014 novel, How To Tell Toledo From The Night Sky. There's two ways to look at Sally and Bernice's plot: They're just looking out for and protecting their children. Both Bernice and Sally's parents got divorced when they were young, and so by arranging their kids' soulmates (albeit without the kids' knowledge), they're just trying to make sure they have happy lives. The other way, though, is that by trying to trick the fate of falling in love, they're actually ruining it. They're trying to have their fate and beat it too. So the question of the novel is, will it work?

So it's a novel about fate vs. free will, yes. But it's also about empirical evidence vs. blind faith,  myth vs. truth, and about overcoming what you are sure you know to be true about the world when new "evidence" is presented. Finally, it's about learning how to be happy.

Our two star-crossed lovers, George and Irene, are both wonderful characters — flawed and neurotic and maddening. And their mothers are even worse.

I really dug this book for both its premise and for Netzer's writing. There are some beautiful, poetic, profound passages as often as there are hilarious, goofy one-liners. It's a book not to take too seriously, but to take seriously enough to truly imagine the possibilities presented with this cool premise.

Five Best Books of 2015 (so far...)

(This post originally appeared on RoscoeBooks' blog.)

We’re 1/3 of the way through 2015. Amazing! But for my money, the best 2/3 of the year remain — not only because of street fests, barbeques, the World Series, leaves, Christmas, etc., but also because here come some pretty great books! So far this year, though, there have also been some pretty great books. At the 33.33333 percent mark of the year, here are my five favorites so far.

5. The Girl On The Train, by Paula Hawkins — The most popular book of the year so far is mostly worth the hype. It’s a riveting read, and even though I had a few minor issues with the novel, on balance, I liked it. It kept me up late reading, guessing, and feeling terrible for the poor hot mess of a protagonist.

4. The Kind Worth Killing, by Peter Swanson — Okay, but if you liked The Girl On The Train, you’ll LOVE this book. It’s populated with a bevy of unlikeable characters who plot horrible things for each other. At its root, it’s a dueling-narrative thriller about a failed marriage and a plot to kill the cheating wife — which, of course, doesn’t exactly go as planned. And the story gets pretty crazy from there. Give this one a shot — you may not have heard of it, but it’s really, really good.

3. Get In Trouble, by Kelly Link — Short stories: woohoo! These kooky, imaginative stories will certainly keep you on your toes. There are nudists, runaway teenagers, superheroes, sex dolls, astronauts, ghosts, and much more. But the idea here is that these fantastical (and fantastic!) stories allow Link to explore a theme of what is real, authentic, and genuine, and how can we know.

2. Glow, by Ned Beauman — This is the zaniest, most fun novel I’ve read in awhile. A nefarious American mining company operating in Burma is attempting to take over the drug trade in London. But why? And what’s the deal with the mysterious foxes popping up all over the city? This story is part Pynchon, with a mix of Murakami, and all good time. A guy who has something called non-24-sleep/wake syndrome has to try to solve the mystery of why this mining company is killing his friends. Along the way, he meets a beautiful woman named Cherish who may not be everything she seems.

1. A Little Life, by Hanya Yanigahara — It’s hard to imagine this won’t be my favorite of the full year eight months from now (even with a new Franzen and a To Kill a Mockingbird sequel!) — I was just blown away by this book. It’s as intense a read as you’ll find, but also incredibly engrossing and immensely rewarding. If you’re the kind of reader who misses the characters after you close the final page, well, that’ll be the case here too. I still miss them several months later.

(Honorable mention — Bonita Avenue, by Peter Buwalda. I just finished this massive tome about a dysfunctional Dutch family. And I really enjoyed it, but I need let it sink in a little more before I can assess its place on a “best of…” list.)

Bonita Avenue: Dutch Disaster, Dysfunction

If you haven't heard of Dutch novelist Peter Buwalda's debut novel, Bonita Avenue, don't feel bad — but you're going to want to take note. The novel was published in the Netherlands in 2010, and after a successful run in Europe, including several awards, it's only just made it into translated publication here in the US this January.

Thank goodness it did — what a crazy, massively entertaining novel! It's part Franzen in that it includes a deeply dysfunctional family that prides itself in keeping secrets from each other. It's part Philip Roth in that the protagonist is a crusty old dude with some, er, sexual quirks. And it's part Coen brothers (especially Fargo) in that it's about everyday people that seem to go off the rails due to bad decision, which in turn cause them to do really bad, sometimes violent, things.

The story is about a family and its patriarch, Siem Sigerius, a world famous mathematician (not an oxymoron), former world-class judoku (a person who does judo), and head of prestigious Dutch university (self explanatory). His mid-20s daughter (though she's actually a step-daughter) Joni is dating a guy named Aaron — these two get up to some schemes, to say the least. And finally, it's about Siem's estranged son Wilbert, an ex-con pervert who has just gotten out of jail after serving ten years for killing a guy with a sledgehammer. (Evidently the Dutch legal system is a tad more forgiving than ours.)

The plot of the novel is centered around a real event — on May 13, 2000, a fireworks factory exploded in the Dutch city of Enschede, taking out an entire neighborhood. This event has a ripple effect for all these characters, setting forth a series events that ensures things won't end well for many for them. (That's not a spoiler - you have that sense from the opening pages.)

One of the themes of the novel is how fate or coincidence or pure randomness (Siem had taught the math of coincidence and chance theory when he was a professor at MIT and then at Berkeley before returning to Holland) can have just as a big an influence on our lives as our choices (of course). But coincidence can compound already bad decisions. Indeed, when we make bad choices, and then lie, and then make more bad choices, and then a dash of fate is thrown in, the consequences are multiplied exponentially — like, say, an explosion, like say, at a fireworks factory.

By the way, if you're wondering, Bonita Avenue is a street in Berkeley — it's where the family lived when Siem taught there. For Joni, it's a symbol of her happy childhood, before the world and all its destructive powers, both self-inflicted and random, intervened.

This is a brick of a novel — more than 530 pages. At some points, it does feel a bit over-written, but at other times some weird stuff happens that isn't full explained, so overall, I had no quarrels with the length. The only caveat is that if you need likeable characters to like a book, this isn't a novel for you. Personally, I would've been willing to spend several hundred more pages with these delightfully despicable characters. Though definitely not perfect (what novel is?), this is a highly entertaining family saga, and highly recommended.