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ninjamuse 's review for:
The Last Neanderthal
by Claire Cameron
In brief: Girl is a young Neanderthal woman whose world revolves around the Family and their survival. Rose is an archaeologist who’s discovered Girl’s remains in context with a modern human and whose battleground is academia. Their stories parallel each other in interesting ways.
Thoughts: I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about this book. On the one hand, Cameron’s done a fantastic job translating the latest discoveries about Neanderthals into people and a culture and a good story, and she brings up feminist issues (especially women in academia feminist issues) and handles those well too. And she has a nice literary style.
On the other hand, I couldn’t help feeling like the simpler language of the Neanderthal sections made them feel a little more … animal? Child-like? than Cameron was maybe intending going by her preface and end notes, and while I connected to Rose for her scientific outlook and feminism, I lost a lot of that towards the end, with her feelings about pregnancy and babies. It was almost like Cameron was forcing the parallels with Girl there at the expense of Rose’s character—but what do I know, I’ve never been pregnant.
Humanising Neanderthals is pretty clearly Cameron’s intent and she succeeds with that. She succeeds with the feminism too, for the most part, and with portraying the differences between Neanderthals and modern humans through their actions. The book was an enjoyable and interesting read, but I didn’t find it super engaging and suspect it’s not going to be a memorable book for for me.
Warnings: There’s research out there about a link between Neanderthals and autism and this book can definitely be read that way. Autism rep! Hurrah! But note: simple language, multiple comparisons of Neanderthal life to the way animals do things, and “autistic” characters who, while human, also kind of aren’t. Cameron’s also drawn on more recent hunter-gatherer cultures for her Neanderthal one, which is understandable but at the same time, those are POC cultures and her Neanderthals are white, and again, there’s that simple language thing…. Neither of these issues is blatantly, horrifyingly there, at least to me, but … caution needed, I think.
6.5/10
Thoughts: I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about this book. On the one hand, Cameron’s done a fantastic job translating the latest discoveries about Neanderthals into people and a culture and a good story, and she brings up feminist issues (especially women in academia feminist issues) and handles those well too. And she has a nice literary style.
On the other hand, I couldn’t help feeling like the simpler language of the Neanderthal sections made them feel a little more … animal? Child-like? than Cameron was maybe intending going by her preface and end notes, and while I connected to Rose for her scientific outlook and feminism, I lost a lot of that towards the end, with her feelings about pregnancy and babies. It was almost like Cameron was forcing the parallels with Girl there at the expense of Rose’s character—but what do I know, I’ve never been pregnant.
Humanising Neanderthals is pretty clearly Cameron’s intent and she succeeds with that. She succeeds with the feminism too, for the most part, and with portraying the differences between Neanderthals and modern humans through their actions. The book was an enjoyable and interesting read, but I didn’t find it super engaging and suspect it’s not going to be a memorable book for for me.
Warnings: There’s research out there about a link between Neanderthals and autism and this book can definitely be read that way. Autism rep! Hurrah! But note: simple language, multiple comparisons of Neanderthal life to the way animals do things, and “autistic” characters who, while human, also kind of aren’t. Cameron’s also drawn on more recent hunter-gatherer cultures for her Neanderthal one, which is understandable but at the same time, those are POC cultures and her Neanderthals are white, and again, there’s that simple language thing…. Neither of these issues is blatantly, horrifyingly there, at least to me, but … caution needed, I think.
6.5/10