by Lilly King
Reviewed by Cris Wilson
Margaret Mead was a role model for many girls coming of age in the 60's. We had "Coming of Age in Samoa" and Jane Goodall's work with the chimpanzees, and Mary and Louis Leakey in Africa. Becoming an anthropologist seemed like the most wonderful aspiration. It was exciting to think about leading a life of adventure and writing something important about how human groups didn't all behave or believe the white western way. Lily King has taken the bare facts of Mead's work New Guinea with her first husband and added the entanglement of meeting Gregory Bateson to form a love triange while moving amid dangerous and volatile tribesmen in the Sepik River basin. This is a novel imagining what could have happened with enough truth to make it a delightful and authentic escape for the reader.
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