Rating: 
Summary: This student failed to enjoy it
Review: A previous reviewer said that as a teacher he's found that students never fail to enjoy William Golding's THE INHERITORS. When this reviewer was a sophomore English student, I can assure him that I failed to enjoy this book. My teacher thought this book was one of the all-time literary greats. I just thought it was boring.And now I have an even bigger reason to dislike this book. I happen to hate reading screeds that trash the author's own ancestors. I'm sure homo sapiens were not perfect, but please show me a race or culture of people who are. My plea to high school English teachers everywhere: If you must require your students to read Golding, have them read LORD OF THE FLIES. It's marginally better than THE INHERITORS and, if I remember correctly, does not include ancestor bashing.
Rating: 
Summary: Thought-provoking
Review: As a teacher, I've found this to be a terrific novel for teaching about the clash of cultures, fearing what we don't understand, different ways of seeing, thinking about and imagining the world in which we live. Students never fail to enjoy it.
Rating: 
Summary: This one of the most confusing books EVER!!!
Review: At a first glance the book just seems to tell a story that kind of makes little sense at points but is very baisic all in all. This first notion isn't true at all. When you read it over carefully and study it you start to get a sense of that great complexity of the book. If you have to read this book for a class make sure you read it a couple of times it really isn't what it seems.
Rating: 
Summary: Intriguing Plot.....
Review: But at some points there is just way to much to take in. Although the plot is very interesting and the characters and scene are well developed, you have to be very dedicated to reading this novel. In some sections it can be very difficult to understand what is going on at all. Unless you are prepared to read pages over and over again, you may want to try something else.
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Summary: Pre-technology earth: Neanderthal loses to Homo-sapiens.
Review: Golding simply holds up as an excellent, if not classic, author no matter what subject he researched and pursued. I couldn't put this novel down. Golding takes his readers on a journey into a world seen through the eyes, visions, and emerging language expressions of primitive man. His sensitively drawn characters, whose language is limited, form 'pictures' in their minds and use this mental illumination to guide them to food, to their seasonal homes and to acquaint them to possible dangers. The descriptions are marvelous: cold, wet, hungry, dependence on a sense of smell (you find yourself sniffing a lot), stones for weapons, hyenas signaling a kill for the band of our earliest ancestors to steal, recipes cooked in a style that remind one of haggis (no refrigerator raiding is elicited in this read by the way) and a lush plant entwined forest of the early spring replete with mystical ice women to be worshipped. Within the pages, the author's imagination, ideas, and symbols are used at their best removing the reader from the world of 2001 into a consideration of the earth and stars alone, untouched by any sort of technology. Essentially it is Lok and his small Neanderthal band that are faced with other humans, unlike themselves, for the first time. The 'other' (homo-sapiens) is armed with bows and arrows, sharpened tools made from bone and an ability to cross rivers and lakes by rowing logs. Golding possibly was inspired by the scientific find of a primitive people who could cross the water discovered sometime in the early 1950's. In any event this is a story that readers will find to be absorbing and has the potential to provide an insight into a daily life of a society devoted to survival with only the earth as a guide to how. Wiliam Golding tells a stirring, astonishing story with a writer's technical virtuosity applied as only he can do.
Rating:
Summary: Exasperating, poorly conceived, terribly written novel.
Review: Golding's "The Inheritors" was originally published in 1955, and was his first book after "Lord of the Flies" made his name. Unfortunately, while his first novel was intriguing, well-written and suspenseful, "The Inheritors" is one of the most bizarre and confused novels of its time. There's no real story here. Neanderthal man encounters cro-magnon, and is killed off. While it sounds like an exciting premise, this book actually consists of little more than endless, repetitious, vague landscapes, repeated over and over and over again. These landscapes, which describe each and every leaf, rock, patch of dirt or sparkle of light on the water of a flowing river, take up literally sixty percent of this brief but agonizingly slow moving novel's pages. Along with the landscapes, we are told in painfully tedious detail of each character's physical movements as he or she walks among the minutely described leaves, rocks and patches of dirt, while looking at the sparkle of the light on the river. These details take up most of the rest of the book. There is very little here that actually constitutes narrative; instead, there is only description and accumulation of sentences. The two main characters, Fa and Lok, are quite different. While Fa is a smart and resourceful Neanderthal, Lok, who stands at the center of the descriptions, is extraordinarily dense and slow-witted, even for a caveman. Within a few pages, this reader found Lok annoying and exasperating. Why Golding chose to make him the center of the book is a mystery. One last point. This novel seems to have been edited severely (and not particularly carefully) from a longer manuscript, since many pages and the entire second-to-last chapter don't flow together in a coherent fashion. This only adds to the book's inertia and mystification. It's amazing that this was ever published in any form. I really wanted to like "The Inheritors." Unfortunately, I had to force myself to finish it and ended up loathing it as much as any book I've ever read.
Rating:
Summary: I loved it
Review: I haven't been so emotionally involved in a book since...well, for a long time. This novel is about a family group of Neanderthals who travel to their cave for the warmer part of the year and meet there a group of modern men. The resulting events are as intense and terrifying for the reader as they are for the Neanderthals. Because Golding shows everything from their point of view, we are often left as puzzled and uncomprehending as they. The descriptions of objects the we know about -- bows and arrows, boats, alcohol -- are written as the Neanderthals saw them. The actions of the modern humans -- their rituals and hierarchy -- Golding makes successfully foreign -- but when we sit and think about what we've read, we realize, wait, I *know* this, this is what humans do. The characterization is achieved deftly and sensitively, Lok and Fa are compelling as is their fate. Prehistory was very likely *not* like this -- but the themes stand, and this book is powerful. I do not think Golding is doing a disservice to our species, because this is how we are. He is telling a damn good, if tragic, story. I will re-read this book over and over again, I know. Golding is truly great, and this book is greater, in my opinion, than the oft-assigned "Lord of the Flies."
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Summary: After All These Years
Review: I read THE INHERITORS back in the early 60's when I was a home mother with six kids. The book was so intellectually stimulating that I could not forget it. I have been a Great Books leader, a journalist, and a novelist in the forty or so years since reading THE INHERITORS and I still consider it a classic. I have been asked to nominate a book of the 60's to Pinellas County, Fl. libraries for discussion and have chosen THE INHERITORS. It combines the depth of literature with an implicit concept of the underpinnings of the 60's. My books are STAND FAST and FREEDOM'S COST.
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Summary: MORONS
Review: I'm reading this reviews and I'm just apalled. So it's boring isn't it? What did you expect for Christsakes, fireworks? It's just a bloody book and it's full of letters. In a way it's not finished until you read it. And it's up to you to bring it to life in your own brain. Have you got one? Stick to Swcharzenager.
Rating: 
Summary: A Tale of Two Species
Review: I'm sure there are plenty of inaccuracies in this book regarding the actual lifestyles of Neanderthals and early humans during this time. But, this novel works better as mythological, or symbolic fable (like Lord of the Flies) than as a historical sketch of the dawn of humanity. The broader themes are more important that the fossil record here. Based on my appreciation for Lord of the Flies, and based on the intriguing premise advertized on this novel's cover, I was really looking forward to seeing how well Golding was able to capture the minds of the Neanderthals through his prose. I was very impressed with how well he immersed his own authorship in their world. In fact, he may have been TOO successful. Be advised, potential reader, that very little familiar detail is given to explain all that takes place. You'll be confused, on one level, but also inescapably aware of what's happening on another, and this is the real strength of the story. If you allow yourself to feel both you'll be on a very similar learning curve as the protagonists throughout their plight for survival, but with a slightly more distressing feeling in your heart because... well, you know how it all turned out in the long run, right? Moderately experienced readers with vivid imaginations should give this one a try.
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