Fue Ruth Claire la que encontró al eslabón perdido: un homínido, resto de una etapa anterior en la evolución humana, cuyos antepasados habían sido transplantados a América a principios del siglo XIX, una curiosidad antropológica ni siquiera dotada del don de la palabra, condenada a convertirse en pasto de la prensa y de los burócratas de la ciencia... si no fuera porque Ruth Claire y su ex marido Paul estaban dispuestos a ocultarle.

Pero vivimos en una sociedad mediática. Adán - así había sido bautizado el homo habilis por Ruth Claire - salió a la luz y, entre los males de una curiosidad morbosa e interesada, conoció, bajo la amorosa guía de la mujer que le descubrió, convertida en su amante, las mieles de la creación artística y del pensamiento abstracto. Para Adán, también para sus amigos, el choque entre la abstracción religiosa y los atavismos culturales de un pueblo acostumbrado a hablar con los dioses se convirtió en la más asombrosa aventura intelectual.

This is one of my favorite sci-fi's. About the survival of a lone australopithicus! I enjoyed it, and my daughter melissa has read it several times. ( )

An interesting exploration of the idea that some "Human traits" are less mutable than we moderns would like. Even a Homo Habilis can operate reasonably well in modern society. Sometimes that is really inconvenient, especially for a "Prosperity Gospel" preacher. ( )

What does it mean to be human? Bishop's somewhat shaky novel tends to make us want to think that our older/simpler ancestors might actually be better [off]. Reminiscent of the "Ishi" story, this is also a story of prejudice - showing us our innate xenophobic tendencies. ( )

Honestly this novel treaded pretty close to awful at times. Back in the 1980's there was a lot of attention paid to early humans, Neanderthals, speculations on ancient human history, protohumans, and books like Clan of the Cave Bear and a few of the sequels were wildly popular. There was the movie Iceman, and other novels such as Reindeer Moon and ones whose titles don't quickly come to mind. This novel speculates that an ancient species of pre-human (or human) was still in the world, something along the line of Homo Habilis, going along for perhaps 2 million years past their presumed extinction unchanged. The story begins with a woman in Georgia finding this strange gargoyle-like creature in her pecan orchard. They fall in love. They make a baby. Really.

There's much more to the story than this of course.

I'm not quite sure now what I was expecting. The novel is, however, very far from whatever I thought might be there. There is some interesting stuff in here, thoughts about society and prejudice, and a few bits are mildly entertaining, but so much of this story just feels so unbelievably wrong with a cast of characters that are almost universally unlikable that I really felt let down as a reader. The book has three parts. It goes from bad to worse. Not recommended.

The book was first published in 1985. ( )