The Last Neanderthal

The Last Neanderthal by Claire Cameron

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


*** Possible Spoilers ***

Four stars is a little high but they don't allow for 3.6 so 4 it will have to be.

This author is capable of telling an interesting story and that's probably the most important thing for an author to do. Actually, this book consists of two narratives woven together. There's one about an archeologist on a dig finding various bones and artifacts and there's a story set some thousands of years in the past about the owner of those bones and how she lived. The latter is by far the more interesting. The author attempts to draw parallels between them but I'm not so sure that worked. There's the Neanderthal woman trying to obtain meat while not becoming dinner for some other predator and there's the modern woman trying to navigate the politically charged field of scientific research. They both have their problems but I found the struggle not to be eaten by leopards was more compelling than the battle over academic credits. Nevertheless, I'm not attempting to survive in academia so maybe there is a case to be made.

During the course of the story, both women give birth. The author provides a particularly powerful description of the birth process but being male, I can't judge the veracity of it; nevertheless, I was impressed by the powerful feelings her description evoked. Mind you, I still don't think I'd care much for the experience at a personal level.

That said, the modern protagonist was not a likeable character. She was defensive and obsessed with her work. There's nothing wrong with a little obsession when it comes to work but if one is going to go that route, it's a really bad idea to have children. The reader gets the feeling that this character viewed childbirth rather like the flu. It's unpleasant while it lasts but once it's over you can forget all about it and get back to work. It doesn't work that way and her frustration built up to the point that she was just about to murder the baby when she was rescued by a colleague. Perhaps the author intended for us to feel sympathy for her situation and struggles. If so, it didn't happen. I find her merely annoying. If I had to rate the book purely on her story it would have received a one.

One thing that I found a little confusing was that the author suggests her Neanderthal characters had some small telepathic talents. They shared dreams. They sensed each other's presence not only by sight, sound and smell but they knew at an intuitive level when others were around. This was a work of fiction so there's nothing wrong with suggesting that. It's just that it didn't add anything to the story so why bother?

I can't say that this is a great story and the reason I read it was because it's on the list for the 2018 Evergreen awards and I wanted to work my way through that list in order to have a look at the state of Canadian literature as selected by librarians. That state appears to be rather sad but I've still got several books to go so things may pick up. This one was okay but I probably wouldn't have bothered with it had I just come across it at random.



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