The Inheritors

Golding described this as his ‘favorite’ novel, although I did not get on with The Inheritors. It is both a clever and intriguing concept, but not something with which I easily engaged. Both this work and Lord of the Flies share some similarities, hence the interest. The two novels concern themselves with the (ostensible) clash between civilization and savagery, and in each there are deaths of innocent characters. If Golding's best-known work was about original sin and the fall (as many critics assert), then The Inheritors is about when the fall occurred. The reader is presented with a cast of Neanderthals (Golding had a strong interest in anthropology) and describes how their existence is shattered by the arrival of humans. It is a laudable effort on the part of Golding to imagine how Neanderthals may have behaved, particularly in the absence of language and given the absence of a frame of reference for describing the appearance of a new species (humans). Somehow it didn't fully resonate and the shifting perspectives/narration didn't fully gel either. Not strong enough to merit keeping. Four out of ten.

By William Golding