Rating: 
Summary: Complex, but worth the effort
Review: This book is complex but worth the effort if you have an IQ of more than room-temperature.The comment by a previous reviewer is worth taking up:"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." Well, I'd agree, strongly. But it's not as simple as that: the Homo Sapiens Sapiens in The Inheritors are not shown as deliberately and strategically wiping out the last Homo Sapiens Neanderthalus. Rather, they are terrified of them. They think they are defending themselves against horrifying demons - why do they submit to the discipline of the whip to drag the canoe up the portage? Plainly they are half out of their minds with terror, which the Neanderthals cannot comprehend. Further, the Neanderthals, though gentle and innocent, are plainly inadequate. The process of their replacement by the Homo Sapiens Sapiens, or Cro-Magnards, is cruel but it is not morbid. The Neanderthals, it is clearly demonstrated, are at a dead-end (they are only a vestige of a tribe at the beginning of the story). The survival of the Neanderthal infant means some of their gentleness and innocence may survive into the new world. It is actually a relief to get into the Cro-Magnards' minds in the final chapter after the limitation of having to see everything from a Neanderthal point of view. The Cro-Magnards are at one point called "the people of the fall" - in religious terms they are the people of the "Fall" indeed - Postlapsarian Man. Unlike the Neanderthals, they do have knowledge of good and evil, and we see at the end even the rudiments of conscience - which is not to say the end of the Neanderthals is not utterly tragic. Like all Golding's earlier works, this is the exploration of difficult moral dilemnas. There are lessons there but they are not easy.
Rating: 
Summary: Whatever you do, don't buy this book
Review: Unfortunately, I have been forced to read this novel for my English class. It is extremely difficult due to the fact that the main characters haven't mastered a little thing we like to call language yet. Because Golding refuses to help the reader along with proper narration, the outcome is nothing short of a migrane. Just wanted to give all of you presently sane people out there a little warning before throwing all of that sanity away attempting to decipher meaning in this book.
Rating:
Summary: Ended the summer on a bad note
Review: We don't know what they were thinking when they chose this book as required reading but it was bad with a capital B. We love reading but give us a break. Lord of the flies must have been written by another author. We do not recommend this book unless you need help falling asleep.
Rating: 
Summary: The Inheritors reads like a rough draft
Review: We have to remember that Golding wrote "The Inheritors" in the pre-word-processor era. We also remember that he wrote it before much of the modern information about Neanderthal society had been published. But even so, he could have cleaned up this draft considerably and made his characters more internally consistant.
I had the time to read this short book as I would a draft, making marginal comments and sorting out its meanings. If I'd been condemned to read it as a student I would have skimmed it for its high points then thrown it on the dung heap of flawed experimental fiction, along with other pretensions like "Catcher in the Rye".
The book begins by hammering a group of non-intuitive names and relationships at the reader, rapidly followed by description of characters' thought process and family customs which is more ideosyncratic than descriptive. Much of Golding's language must be sorted out by context and some is just wrong no matter how it is sorted. For instance, why would a people who have nearly no graphic art insist on calling their memories/thoughts/ideas 'pictures'?
When one finally mentally translates the verbage into more familiar concepts, there are a few pages of fairly good prose. But what quickly follows is a cryptic description of despair and murky action as one after another Neanderthal is killed or captured by their H. sapians visitors. I will admit Golding captures the mindless dread very well, but all is too opaque for the casual reader. I can understand odd writing style to denote foreign culture, but one should stick to one style and not randomly change it time and again.
When we finally sort through our dread and bizarrely worded descriptions to develop a real empathy for the remaining characters he drops the entire story. To end things he shifts persepctives and throw out a teaser description of the enemy. It was as if he were steadily writing then his editor sent him notice of an earlier deadline, so he had to type a few pages and send in the manuscript.
I have written worse, much worse. But at least I rewrote it until it was readable.
One brilliant point in his favor, he leaves one of the main characters unnamed. The reason for this is buried deep in the psychological depths of humanity and I leave the reader to guess it.
Rating:
Summary: Different, a book to be read by all!
Review: When asked to read this book my first reaction was, it looks so old, it can't be good. As i started to read it i found it different from all other books that i had read. The book is slow at the start but it does become more interesting as the author discribes the way the world is seen by Neanderthal man; 'pictures' are memories and they believe logs are alive and have a mind of their own. William Golding's view point on their world is really an eye opener and this is a book that should be read by all. Inspiring!
Rating: 
Summary: Boring!
Review: William Golding likes to kill you with detail in this book and he comes pretty close! There is one part about a fox and you wish that you would just die. The characters are confusing and the book is just bad!
| 
