BOOK REPORT

Yesterday, I pulled William Golding's 1955 novel, The Inheritors, off my shelves and started to re-read it. All of you know of Golding's most famous novel, Lord of the Flies, and most of you no doubt have read it. The Inheritors is utterly different. It is a beautifully realized account, told from their point of view, of a small group of Neanderthal men, women, and children who encounter a group of far more culturally advanced group of Cro-Magnon homo sapiens sapiens, or men. Golding imagines the Neanderthal as simple, fun-loving, loyal, and possessed of a primitive form of telepathic sharing of visual images. The novel can be read in many ways, not least as raising questions about whether the evolution of the human race was an advance over what preceded it.

If you are looking for a good read, I recommend it.