Review of THE LAST NEANDERTHAL by Claire Cameron

3 Stars

This book just didn’t resonate with me. 

There are two parallel stories.  Girl is a Neanderthal, presumably the last one.  Her story focuses on her struggles to survive, especially as the members of her family become fewer and fewer.  Rose is an archaeologist who discovers Girl’s skeleton, along with that of a male homo sapien.  Rose’s goal is to prove that Neanderthals were not inferior in terms of intelligence and physical abilities and that Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens mated since modern humans have Neanderthal DNA.

There are similarities between Girl and Rose.  Girl must contend with the power dynamics within her family; Rose must manoeuvre the power dynamics at the archaeological dig and the museum that is providing her funding.  The most obvious commonality is that both women are pregnant.  Obviously, this book is intended as a tale of common humanity, but the similarities seem awkwardly inserted into the narrative.

Girl’s section has passages which I found difficult to accept.  For example, we are told that “When one [member of the family] had a dream, the others saw the same pictures in their heads, whether they remembered in the morning or not” (10).  Also, Girl’s “mind held the memories of all the hunts [her mother] had been on too, and her mother before as well.  And Girl also had the stories that came to her in dreams from the other members of the family” (40).  The Neanderthals are shown to communicate with animals; they have a “truce with the bears” (179) at the annual spring fish run, a “long-standing peace” (175).  Girl is so in tune with nature that she can read messages in leaves:  “Meat that is alive sends pulses of heat into the air.  This comes from the fire inside the chest of a body.  When this warmth hits the air, it moves in patterns around the trees.  It pushes and pulls at the leaves in particular ways. . . . The trees that line the valley take up and exaggerate the movement.  They pass the message down.  If Girl watched and felt the patterns in the leaves, she could read them” (119).  The impression is that the author tried too hard to portray Neanderthals as deserving of our respect.

Rose’s narrative has problems too, the most significant being that Rose is unlikeable.  She is obsessed with work and when she discovers she is pregnant, her main concern is not for her child but for her inability to oversee the dig.  Her focus is on how the pregnancy will affect her career; she expresses no love for the child she is carrying and gives no thought to his/her welfare, not even insuring that he/she will have access to adequate health care.  Often, women must sacrifice their careers to have children but it is difficult to have any sympathy for a woman who is so self-centred.  The reader is to believe Rose is intelligent, but her naivety suggests otherwise.  What woman would promise her partner that she would deliver the baby on a particular weekend (225)?   Is Rose’s ineptitude supposed to emphasize Girl’s intuitive understanding of pregnancy and motherhood? 

This novel was a finalist for the 2017 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, but I can’t understand why.  The jury described the book as “engrossing” but I didn’t find it compelling.  The novel was also commended for its “great sophistication” but I found it clunky; the author’s attempts to shake up “the classic Neanderthal tropes in science fiction and fantasy” are stiff and mechanical. 

The author had a purpose (which she outlines in the prologue):  to emphasize similarities between modern humans and Neanderthals.  Unfortunately, her theme is not conveyed with the finesse of great fiction. 

Note:  On the same topic, this exhibition might be interesting:  https://www.historymuseum.ca/neanderthal/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=pagepost&utm_campaign=cart19+neandertal&utm_content=neandertal&fbclid=IwAR2Ax88lghLsVcA4LqvF2hWph4h_eFatDS6ZzfpNVK2QLcYqiv84HQw45zE