|
REVIEW SPOTLIGHT
|
Welcome to BookLooker's monthly Review Spotlight.Check each month for a different review"Neanderthal" by John Darnton Arrow Books (An imprint of Random House UK) 1996 (402 pages) Reviewed by Rosanne Dingli "Neanderthal" is an entertaining novel written by a well-read serious writer who once worked as a journalist, editor and reviewer with major newspapers in England and the USA. Reading the short biography of this writer, one expects good writing - and gets it, to a certain extent. This is after all, I think, his first novel. The story revolves around a female paleontologist and a male anthropologist who are summoned mysteriously to a remote mountainous location where an eminent Harvard paleontologist has disappeared. He is still alive, of course, and they do find him - that is not the crux of the story. The crux is that they also discover a population of hominids. Creatures that on one hand coincide with what they have studied and theorised about pregenitors of modern man and on the other hand completely confute what they hold true about acquisition of language, tool-making, myth-forming and so on. This is a readable story that flows well, and has only a few spots that drag. The potential for romance between the two travelling scientists is used well, and the science that crops up from time to time in the dialogue is not too heavy to be taken in by the lay reader nor too superficial to displease those with more than a passing knowledge of evolution science. The bibiography at the back cites some respected publications, with some glaring omissions, but I shall not go into that here except to say that I would have expected John Darnton to have read Steven Pinker if he was going to talk about acquisition of language! Even in a novel, the reader likes to have opinions debated, and a really good story must be based on believable science, believable crime, believable romance, believable violence and so on. "Neanderthal" is not bad in this regard at all, and it is up to the reader whether to believe what the scientists found in those mountains. What I enjoyed most was the peppering of science, the very human debates and controversies, the involvement of US and Russian expeditions to the site - a race to be first to capture and study whatever was to be found there, and the good blend of very distinguishable characters that expose human fraility and its reflection in the hominids: something that explains how our propensity for violence, envy, fear and distrust evolved. Of course it is a novel, not a study - many would find it silly - but I found it entertaining. The blurb on the back describes the book as a sort of "Jurassic Park", and it may well be so.
End. Rosanne Dingli is a Western Australian freelance editor, author and manuscript assessor. Her short fiction has been widely published and awarded. This review is copyright. Rosanne Dingli asserts her right to be acknowledged as its author. It may only be reproduced on request. |
|
|
