Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.29 AVERAGE
3.29 AVERAGE
"The people are like a famished wolf in the hollow of a tree. The people are like honey trickling from a crevice in the rock. The people are like honey in the round stones, the new honey that smells of dead things and fire. They are like the river and the fall, they are a people of the fall, nothing stands against them. They are Oa."
A somewhat pessimistic view of humanity, told through the lens of simpler, kinder Neanderthals who gaze at Homo sapiens through the bushes. Golding shows humans as fearful, warmongering people. Considering he wrote The Inheritors shortly after WW2 this view comes as no surprise.
A somewhat pessimistic view of humanity, told through the lens of simpler, kinder Neanderthals who gaze at Homo sapiens through the bushes. Golding shows humans as fearful, warmongering people. Considering he wrote The Inheritors shortly after WW2 this view comes as no surprise.
challenging
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
How does one put into words a reaction to a book that was felt rather than read? Times like these, I feel the inadequacy of my ability to articulate my thoughts and feelings acutely.
The Inheritors by William Golding is the second book he wrote and it came quickly after the success of The Lord of the Flies. There definitely are similarities but they do read differently so that one can be immersed in the book without being reminded constantly of the other. In The Inheritors, we follow a group of Neanderthals as they encounter devastating change in the form of the arrival of a group of homo sapiens.
The theme of human destruction was something that was at the forefront of my mind while reading. The Neanderthal group was a peaceful one, living in harmony with nature, and being aware of the impact they had on their environment and vice versa. The contrast between the two groups was stark, with the homo sapiens and their more advanced technology changing the landscape completely within a couple of days. This certainly hasn’t changed, with the way we as a society have positioned ourselves at the pinnacle of nature at the expense of everything else. Are we just naturally more self-centered as a species, thinking only of our own survival? What has shaped our paradigms in such different ways from the Neanderthals?
I think the thing that really sets Golding’s work, at least the two that I’ve read, apart from other works of fiction is his prose. The way he crafts his sentences to evoke a sense of something more than what is on the page, a sort of synergy where the sum of the parts is greater than the whole, is very apparent. Yet, what is remarkable is how different each book reads. It is not merely a personal style, but a conscious working of language to lend to the story. As in The Inheritors, by using Lok, a rather simple-minded individual, as narrator, we are given a viewpoint that is felt through the senses then pieced together rather than presented as a coherent narrative. It was extremely effective in situating the reader in the shoes of a different species (or subspecies, I don’t know) and highlighting how bewildering the changes and new concepts were.
There is so much to unpack and I probably missed out a lot as well, but will definitely enjoy picking this read up again in the future.
Diversity meter:
Neanderthal characters
An unusual and highly original journey through the minds, landscapes and experiences of early man. Unique and brilliant.
Did a project on this book. At first I struggled with the slow pacing, but on the second read, I'll say there was MUCH to be appreciated. This book speaks to human nature, to our rivalries and violent tendencies, to our egoism and greed, to all the things that characterize us as competitive animals. All the things that destroy us and the planet we inherited -- that we were entrusted with. The characterization of the Neanderthals as being wiser and more selfless than the humans makes me wonder who really should've inherited the earth.
But we destroyed them, as we destroy so much else.
But we destroyed them, as we destroy so much else.
What a fascinating time in the history of mankind that Golding chose to write about. Although it was a bit dry for some parts, given the proper time and patience to digest, this was a very thought-provoking book. Golding, after having seen the truths of war firsthand, seems to write often about the primal evil in man, but he has an incredible command of the English language and I applaud him for the concept.
adventurous
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Hated it
This is a clever book and very innovative. It puts you in the mind of Neanderthal man who meets humans for the first time and doesn't understand what he's seeing. To recreate the consciousness of such a person, Golding describes everything they experience as if they were seeing it for the first time - a canoe is a log being dug into the water for example. It's innovative but gets very tiring to read. I was intrigued and excited by it to begin with, but in the end it was too much work to understand what was going on and i gave up 2 chapters from the end.
Very weird and difficult, but an undeniably interesting concept to write from the perspective of a fictional Neanderthal culture.
Staggeringly beautiful. The first novel I've ever read where I've felt that every paragraph, nearly every sentence, must have been meticulously crafted for maximum effect. The novel is short, and no space is wasted. Even so, it took me nearly a month to get through, chunks of 5-10 pages often having enough to satisfy me for an evening.
The plot is simple: a small family group of the declining Neanderthal species are living their lives as they always have, when their normal routines are tragically blasted apart by an encounter with modern humans. It's the telling that elevates this book so highly.
The book is told close in to the perspective of one neanderthal. All speech is simple and direct. Introspection is limited almost entirely to bodily sensations and some inchoate emotions. Knowledge of the past amounts to the picture-memories of the oldest man among them, and the ritual knowledge of their oldest woman, the future is the knowledge that there will be a tomorrow like today, and that the familiar seasons will come again. Description is rich and sensuous, but paradoxically limited and difficult to understand: owing to their lack of interpretive ability, the Neanderthals are unable to understand most of what they see of modern humanity.
Golding mimics this incomprehension in the reader by only using descriptive terms that make sense to his Neanderthal subjects: a bow is related as a bent stick across which another stick is laid. An arrow shot at a tree is shown as a tree inexplicably growing a new twig, tipped with goosefeathers. A waterskin is a shapeless animal that urinates in human mouths. Everything old is new again. This is another thing that slowed my reading. Though the language isn't overly complex, quite often, a description of some simple action had to be read carefully to catch the significance of what it was. The effect was wonderful, however. If I was being tripped up by these actions, the Neanderthals have no hope of understanding.
In that sense, the book is a tragedy. Even beyond the many tragedies that befall the Neanderthals, they could have no place in the world of humanity. Even if the humans had come in peace, they would have no hope of understanding the world that humanity would create.
There is palpable emotion in this book. Though the characters are sketched quickly and simply, they are all distinct and memorable, and every death hits hard.
Golding's attention to anthropological detail is also noteworthy. Lots of things - Mal's sleeping death pose (based on a supposed purposeful neanderthal burial), his lack of grave goods aside from food and water (based on the lack of neanderthals found with any), the stag-man, the the ritualistic removal of a finger for sacrificial purposes (both based in cave paintings), demonstrate a deep interest on Golding's part. I really appreciate him going out of his way to do this - he easily could have made this stuff up whole cloth (which I thought he had), but he chose the hard way, and I appreciate it.
The plot is simple: a small family group of the declining Neanderthal species are living their lives as they always have, when their normal routines are tragically blasted apart by an encounter with modern humans. It's the telling that elevates this book so highly.
The book is told close in to the perspective of one neanderthal. All speech is simple and direct. Introspection is limited almost entirely to bodily sensations and some inchoate emotions. Knowledge of the past amounts to the picture-memories of the oldest man among them, and the ritual knowledge of their oldest woman, the future is the knowledge that there will be a tomorrow like today, and that the familiar seasons will come again. Description is rich and sensuous, but paradoxically limited and difficult to understand: owing to their lack of interpretive ability, the Neanderthals are unable to understand most of what they see of modern humanity.
Golding mimics this incomprehension in the reader by only using descriptive terms that make sense to his Neanderthal subjects: a bow is related as a bent stick across which another stick is laid. An arrow shot at a tree is shown as a tree inexplicably growing a new twig, tipped with goosefeathers. A waterskin is a shapeless animal that urinates in human mouths. Everything old is new again. This is another thing that slowed my reading. Though the language isn't overly complex, quite often, a description of some simple action had to be read carefully to catch the significance of what it was. The effect was wonderful, however. If I was being tripped up by these actions, the Neanderthals have no hope of understanding.
In that sense, the book is a tragedy. Even beyond the many tragedies that befall the Neanderthals, they could have no place in the world of humanity. Even if the humans had come in peace, they would have no hope of understanding the world that humanity would create.
There is palpable emotion in this book. Though the characters are sketched quickly and simply, they are all distinct and memorable, and every death hits hard.
Golding's attention to anthropological detail is also noteworthy. Lots of things - Mal's sleeping death pose (based on a supposed purposeful neanderthal burial), his lack of grave goods aside from food and water (based on the lack of neanderthals found with any), the stag-man, the the ritualistic removal of a finger for sacrificial purposes (both based in cave paintings), demonstrate a deep interest on Golding's part. I really appreciate him going out of his way to do this - he easily could have made this stuff up whole cloth (which I thought he had), but he chose the hard way, and I appreciate it.