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Euphoria - Chapters 16-20 (March 2015)
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Violet
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Mar 04, 2015 05:36AM
This is the thread to discuss any aspects of chapters 16-20 of Lily King's Euphoria.
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I'm finding the traction of this novel pretty bumpy. On the whole I've got to say I look forward to reading it less than the other two novels I'm currently reading. Last night I read twenty pages and today i can't remember a thing about them. I seem to be in the minority though. Anyone else feeling a little disappointed by this novel?
Violet wrote: "I'm finding the traction of this novel pretty bumpy. On the whole I've got to say I look forward to reading it less than the other two novels I'm currently reading. Last night I read twenty pages a..."Violet -- this was a novel about which I had trepidations before ever starting it -- I was concerned about the fictionalization of lives known and "real" within the lifetimes of some of us. Once I got into the novel, I found it a quick read that grabbed me to lay aside other reading, so my experience was quite different than yours. But then Ulysses is one of the books I am reading alongside everything else right now -- and the chaos of its Circe section has been coloring my perceptions the past couple of weeks. Most of my concerns about any fictionalization of Mead and Bateson were allayed -- this seemed more "based on" or "inspired by" than a fictionalization of their lives.
I didn't read The Bone Clock with you all, but I can imagine that was a very different read. Hope you will talk to us a bit about your disappointment. My major one I have sort of staked out in the background comments -- has the author been adequately careful about her research used to fictionalize the place and people of New Guinea? Does it matter that NG has primates, but not monkeys per se?
Lily, I'm still waiting for the euphoria moment when everything falls into place. At times i wonder if my disappointment isn't perhaps due to a lazy reading of the book on my part because I'm not really getting it while others are clearly getting a much richer reading experience. I agree about the research. It rarely feels rooted into the soil of the novel. For me the Tam still don't have a vivid identity. I'm not seeing how they spend a typical day. King is more interested in the sensational than the everyday and this, for me, is caricaturing the culture a bit. And i often feel she doesn't quite have command of her material. This might be due to the obvious problems posed by fictionalising real people. I still have the feeling she wanted to write the English Patient but was beaten to it. That quote you singled out is pure Ondaatje - "The thin moon gave the river a thin silver skin."
Violet wrote: "At times i wonder if my disappointment isn't perhaps due to a lazy reading of the book on my part because I'm not really getting it while others are clearly getting a much richer reading experience..."I wonder this all the time, whenever this happens. I really didn't enjoy Tenth of December, was mostly nonplussed about All The Light We Cannot See, was disappointed by IQ84... all books that many, many others here and elsewhere lauded.
Everyone's buttons are different, is what I always end up figuring. Both in general and on a given day/week/month/year. It's not that there's a specific objective thing that's there to get and you failed to, it's that the thing that's there to get is a thing of two halves, half a jigsaw puzzle, and it's only rich and so forth when combined with certain, 'fitting' pieces from the reader. Sure, some books seem to fit an awful lot of readers' pieces, others very few, but so what?
Terry, don't say that about All the Light! I'm so looking forward to reading that. Couldn't bear it if I too end up nonplussed. High expectation though is always a risky investment and probably my hopes for Euphoria were too high, not helped by the preposterously exaggerated endorsement on the cover - jaw-droppingly, heart-stoppingly beautiful. I mean, come on! That's the kind of things self-published writers write under a pseudonym about their own novels!
Mod
I am writing this before I read the posts above it so it doesn't slant my initial thoughts, as pedestrian as they are ...Again, fast reading. Before I knew it, it was midnight and I reached chapter 20. So it's definitely engaging enough.
But nothing is really happening. There have been times when I've ditched books that take more than half the book to get with the program.
I just want to find out why Bankson has Nell's journals. I am wondering if she dies. Someone needs to die or we need some turning point. It's coming soon, right?
Bankson's crush is getting boring.
Mod
Violet, I was in the marked minority about All The Light, in this group.
Casceil wrote: "Tome Reader, go back to the start of Chapter 7, page 74 in the hardcover, and read that page. It tells how Bankson comes to have the journal. Helen Benjamin gives it to him in 1938. In the later p..."I know how Bankson comes to have Nell's journals. What I am wondering is why.
I am on chapter 20 so I don't know how this ends. At this point, as I am reading I am asking myself "what happens to Nell that she doesn't have possession of her journals and ex-lovers are able to pass them around? And what happens to her husband, Fen, for that matter."
At that point I very much assumed that Helen must have outlasted Nell and that by the time she did, Fen and Nell were no longer together and therefore Helen was somehow named executor.I won't tell you how those assumptions turned out, of course.
I rarely ditch books, but when I do it's usually because of too much plot...
Terry wrote: "...it's usually because of too much plot..."I know this is off-topic, but was that a factor in All the Light We Cannot See? I really did want to understand why you seemed somewhat down on the book, Terry, but I didn't pursue it with you then, just wanted a rich discussion of the book. But it certainly can be considered to have a multiplicity of plots running through it -- and then bouncing all over the place time wise. Hope you'll come back and rejoin the conversation in April. I'm still trying to figure out "why" I liked it so much, even beyond my writing instructor's enthusiasm.
Terry wrote: "Violet, I was in the marked minority about All The Light, in this group."I'm breathing a sigh of relief.
Tome Reader, I agree. I think King's constantly heightening interest only to then almost immediately deflate it by dillydallying. I'm not loving the construction of this book. there is much that's interesting but I just don't feel she's making it all run together very well. But, like I said, I'm still waiting for the euphoria moment when everything falls thrillingly into place. I haven't quite counted that out as a possibility.
If I elaborate on 'too much plot' to say more accurately, too much plotting, then yes, a factor (although not the only one). I want probably more than just about anything for plots to just happen, organically, the way life does. If everything just seems too symmetrical, too neat, too engineered, I find it extremely off-putting. I want the hand of the author to be invisible, to feel that chance/fate decided events, not a writer.But yes, probably best not to have too much on that topic here on this topic. Although I was trying not to expound on that too much there either, in order not to get in the way of a rich discussion of that book.
What does everyone think of Nell herself? To me she's still something of a ghost. A haunting in Bankson's imagination. I don't feel though that the tactic of using nasty Fen to make us sympathetic towards Nell is working. It's having the opposite effect on me a bit. I keep finding myself feeling a bit sorry for Fen and highly sceptical that Nell is the paragon of virtue Bankson wants us to see.
Mod
Nell is sweet and caring. She doesn't have a mean streak anywhere unless you count her ability to drill her reluctant informant for embarrassing-to-them information. She's a bit flat, but I went along with liking her to be a good sport.Fen is dastardly. He's our stock bad guy. It's so easy to dislike, even hate, which also makes him flat.
Chapters 16 - 20. More pining from Bankson and more anthropology that is turning out to just be backdrop. If there's an analogy or deeper layers of meaning here, I am totally missing it.
Despite these gripes, I am still liking the story and the build up though by now I am getting the feeling that the good part is going to happen at the last minute.
I am still enjoying the book. I like the switches from Nell to Bankson to Nell's notes. I do not like Fen. I feel zero sympathy for him. I am eagerly anticipating finding out what Fen did that is connected to Nell having a miscarriage while they were with the Mumbanyo. Nell's a great character. Her involvement with the natives reminds me think of Jane Goodall and her chimps.
