The Inheritors is an absolutely astonishing novel, which I'd urge anyone at all concerned with man's inhumanity to man to read.

Golding's genius is that he instills a tremendous sense of empathy within the reader for his neanderthals, the homo sapiens (or 'new people') by contrast being portrayed as fearful creatures whose actions provide hints of many of the ills that blight the modern world. The former people are gentle and childlike in their naivety, in tune with nature and their environment, whilst the latter are ruthless, savage, lustful, cunning and prone to bouts of intoxicated excess and levels of fear bordering on paranoia.

As the majority of the novel is written from a neanderthal perspective, it takes a while to adjust to their unique and initially alien weltanschauung, but once this adjustment is complete, reading it will only serve to encourage the reader to look at the world in a completely new way. This reappraisal includes re-evaluating (or reinforcing in my case) one's own impression of the human race and its fundamental motivations, and it comes as no surprise to learn that Golding wrote it in the decade following the Second World War.

A wonderful, wonderful novel which expands on the themes explored in Lord of the Flies - in short, contrary to received wisdom, the meek most certainly did not inherit the earth. ( )

The story that William Golding tells in The Inheritors is a compelling one, provided you don't mind the outdated ideas about Neanderthals that were in use when he wrote the book. Golding's Neanderthals are very ape-like. They can speak and use fire, but they don't make tools, don't hunt, and their cognitive powers are far below that of (ancient) Homo sapiens. We now know that those ideas are wrong, and that Neanderthals were far more like Homo sapiens than like apes. However, the fact that Golding's Neanderthals aren't historically accurate detracts nothing from the emotion of the story, in which a small group of Neanderthals has their first meeting with Homo sapiens, with disastrous consequences.

What kept this book from getting the highest rating was the language Golding used. It was very flowery and literary, with lots of metaphors. Sometimes it was hard to follow the story because I had to re-read things in order to get what Golding meant. Still, it was a good book and I recommend it. ( )

I believe that somewhere along the line, probably very early, possibly immediately after Lord of the Flies, William Golding decided to ask himself a simple question every time he brooded over a new project. "Is it actually possible to put this into writing?" If the answer were to be, "no", then he would proceed. The amazing thing, of course, is that he succeeded nearly every time. In this case, the book is narrated by a member of a soon-to-be extinct Neanderthal group, pre-literate, perhaps even pre-verbal, certainly "proto-linguistic." The only reason I didn't apply an extra star to my rating is that The Inheritors is not quite as consummate a masterpiece as, say, Pincher Martin or Darkness Visible. ( )

Abandoned. Just couldn't get into the writing style despite my interest in the subject matter. Will try again at some point. No rating so far.

Definitely an avant garde piece. Takes a while to get into the flow of the writing. ( )