Hav and Euphoria at EIL

I'm a little behind on my reviews here, but I do have a couple of links to some reviews I've written for Escape Into Life recently, which I've either been too busy or too lazy to post about here. The first is for Hav, Jan Morris's book about a city that may be a fictional place, but is really an amalgam of all the places she ever visited in her long and celebrated career as a travel writer. It reminds me a bit of Rebecca West's Black Lamb and Grey Falcon in being a sort of wisdom book, a distillation and a summing up.

The second is Euphoria, Lily King's novel based on the lives of Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson and Reo Fortune. It veers rather significantly away from the actual lives of the famed anthropologists, a fact which in retrospect I may have gotten a little hung up on. There's some great writing and wonderful observations in this book, so don't let my quibbles stop you from taking a look.

More reviews to come soon. Meanwhile, happy holiday reading, everyone.