No one could have written four more odd or outlandishly creative books than [William Golding] has. He has told us how it feels to go insane, to drown, to commit suicide, to be dead, to be a child—all in an uncannily convincing manner. He is certainly one of the most original writers of the day. But in his new book, The Inheritors, he tells us how it feels to be a Neanderthal man, and here he has perhaps gone a bit too far….

Fictional heroes with names like Lok, Oa and Fa somehow already suggest a questionable scope of dramatic action, allegorical or otherwise, and when each is saddled with an I.Q. of about 8, things are bound to be slow. The big question is: can the reader identify with a Neanderthal man? There is such a thing as "writing down" to an audience, granted—but this...