November 2018 book review

THE INHERITORS, by William Golding
Being an everyday story of country folk, living in the Home Counties, circa 40,000 BC. An extended family ekes out a precarious existence, never far from starvation or the predations of larger, more dangerous animals than them. Then another band of people, very different from them, kills one of the group and kidnaps a child.
            Golding leaves it to us to work out what is going on in this strange, troubling tale of Neanderthals encountering Homo Sapiens. And that isn’t always easy, for we are placed inside the minds of the former, whose brains seem to have hypertrophied right, or instinctual brains, strong on emotion, imaginative powers and even a touch of SEP, but tiny left brains, leaving them short on logical deductive ability and problem solving. No wonder they had to give way to the more aggressive, inventive and resourceful sub-species of Man. Us.
            Golding sets down a challenge for the reader in this book, which requires patience and application, but the result, as with all his works, is immensely satisfying.

THE EMERALD PLANET, by David Beerling.
When we think about evolution, our attention is naturally caught first by the animals, dinosaurs, whale-eating aquatic monsters and other equally sexy creatures. Hardly surprising really: plants don’t move around much (except, as Marge Simpson famously pointed out, those Mexican fighting trees - sorry) But as David Beerling explains in this fascinating book, understanding the evolution of plants is key to understanding the evolution of the Earth as a whole. It is plants, remember, that have made huge contributions to the composition of the atmosphere, enriching it with life-giving oxygen, so much so in the Permian Period (300-250 million years ago) that oxygen levels were 50% higher than today, enabling the appearance of giant insects; metre long centipedes, scorpions as big as labradors and dragonflys the size of buzzards.
            To be fair, without the basic scientific background I have had this book may have been hard to follow, but it is well written and designed for the well-informed layperson. Intriguing stuff.

THE SUSPICIONS OF MR. WHICHER, by Kate Summerscale
In a small Wiltshire village, a well-to-do family is stunned when their five-year-old son is abducted in the night, and later, found with his throat cut. With no clues apparent, the local constabulary calls in Inspector Whicher of Scotland Yard, noted thief-taker and model for detectives fashioned by such luminaries as Wilkie Collins (Inspector Cuff in The Moonstone) and Charles Dickens (Inspector Bucket in Bleak House). After interviewing all the main players, Whicher comes to the disturbing conclusion that a family member is responsible for this dastardly deed; worse she is a 15 year-old girl. How can this be? A young girl capable of such a terrible crime?
            And Inspector Whicher doesn’t just have universal incredulity to contend with: soon class sensibility rears its ugly head. There are rumblings that a working class artisan, albeit a talented and successful one, is hardly the right person to delve into the dirty linen (literally in this case) of an upper middle class family. Will the truth ever come out? Read on...
            A tremendous success when it came out in 2008, Kate Summerscale’s book is now seen as one of the finest ‘true crime’ books in English, and in this reviewer’s opinion, one of the best pieces of ‘creative nonfiction’ I have read in a long time. Highly recommended.

A LEGACY OF SPIES, by John le Carre
A retired MI6 agent is disturbed in his reverie on a farm in Brittany by the news that he is about to be sued over an operation that went wrong nearly 50 years before.
             Like everybody else, I read Le Carre’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold a very long time ago, but it is the action of that book which forms the backdrop to this latest foray into the mysterious lives of George Smiley’s people. The main protagonist of this tale being a former spy who as part of his job is used to lying all the time, so will lying his way through this see him in the clear? Not if the new guard at MI6 have anything to do with it, because they need someone to throw under the bus, and our man seems tailor-made for the fall-guy.
            If you like Le Carre, and let’s face it nearly everyone does, you will savour this tale of the past entwining itself with the present. Give it a try.