THE INHERITORS

The Inheritors, William Golding, Harcourt Brace & World, 1955, 233 pp


This is Golding's follow up to Lord of the Flies. I found the book almost incomprehensible but somehow he kept me going to the end. It is a story about the last days of Neanderthal man and how they were taken over by the ancestors of Homo Sapiens.

Golding did an admirable job of telling the story through the viewpoints of these prehistoric people. It was that point of view however, that made the comprehension so difficult. Many times for many pages, I simply could not decode their impressions into anything I could grasp.

When I finally finished the book, I checked reader reviews on the web, which not surprisingly ranged from zero to five stars. But over half gave it four or five stars, which I did find surprising. I liked Clan of the Cave Bear better.


(The Inheritors is available in paperback by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)