Euphoria by Lily King

The "eternal triangle" is certainly familiar to us, both from real life and from fiction, and yet the love triangle Lily King portrays here is unique and uncommonly intense. The setting is exotic: the remote jungle villages of New Guinea in the 1930s. The three participants are unusual people: brilliant anthropologists who are studying native tribes. The passion is (perhaps) uncharacteristic: as much an affinity of the mind as a physical sexual attraction. The inevitable destructive jealousy is anomalous: more professional than sexual.

King's story was inspired by the real life anthropologist Margaret Mead and her second and third husbands. But beware of doing as I did and reading up on Mead's life before starting the novel, because the real and the fictional do not play out in the same way at all.

The fascinating and passionate account of intellectual discovery as the three anthropologists collaborate is more the heart of the narrative than the physical love affair, and that, more than anything else, is what makes this a very unusual version of a very stock situation. King conveys her absorbing story with complete believability and emotional depth. My only criticism would be that the ending is a bit contrived and melodramatic for my tastes.

This 2014 novel was the Kirkus Prize winner and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. I recommend it highly.