The Inheritors
I don't know what made me think a novel by the guy who wrote 'Lord of the Flies' wouldn't be depressing.
'The Inheritors' is about a small tribe of Neanderthals, and their devastating encounter with a group of homo sapiens. It was hard to get into at first, because the narrator was a rather dim member of the Neanderthal tribe.
Golding is a gifted writer, however, and the characters and the story eventually become clear. I still found it hard to concentrate on it, and events took place so suddenly, so subtly, that I didn't even know they had taken place until pages later.
All in all it was a quick read, and a far more interesting approach to the interactions between early humans than Jean M. Auel would have produced. Her version would be 2000 pages of sex behind convenient shrubbery, mentions of the Earth Mother, followed by more sex behind convenient shrubbery.
