Lost and Found

The discovery of Richard III’s body under a parking lot in Leicester, England, in 2012 ended the long search for the remains of the 15th-century king, but it also delivered a startling, dissonant reminder: History lies just beneath our feet. Similarly, the past collides with the present in some of the stories in Margaret Atwood’s “Wilderness Tips.” “Julie broke up with Connor in the middle of a swamp,” reads the first line of “The Bog Man,” about an affair between a student and her professor that is carried on, in part, near an archaeological dig during which the 2,000-year-old body of a man is unearthed. In “The Age of Lead,” a televised account of the excavation of another body — this one from a 19th-century Arctic expedition — stirs one woman’s aching memories of the life and death of her dear, inscrutable, sardonic friend. Atwood’s wry and rueful tales bridge the gap between your usual reading habits and your new interest in the natural world.

Claire Cameron’s evocative novel “The Last Neanderthal” also interweaves the contemporary with the primeval. Her page turner is anchored by the story of Dr. Rose Gale, who discovers the bones belonging to a pair of bodies (a Neanderthal and a modern Homo sapiens) in a cavern in France, and whose career was inspired by H.G. Wells’s description of Neanderthals from “The Outline of History.” (Wells also wrote a piece of prehistoric fiction, “The Grisly Folk.”) The most visceral and moving chapters are those devoted to Girl, a Neanderthal cast out from “the hearth of the family.” Though Cameron signals the connection between the lives of Girl and Rose early on, the suspense lies in the way she laces together their stories.

In 1955, one year after the publication of “The Lord of the Flies,” its author, William Golding, came out with another novel, this one about early hominids: “The Inheritors.” Golding’s book, like Cameron’s, tracks Neanderthals at a time when their numbers are dwindling and when they come in contact, albeit uneasily, with humans. However, Golding’s strongly sensory work — told primarily from the perspective of Lok, the Everyman — leans more heavily on imagination (including a kind of pictorial telepathy) than on research.

Animal Magnetism

Innovation and fact blend seamlessly in Barbara Gowdy’s complex, meditative and deeply sad novel “The White Bone,” told entirely from the point of view of elephants. The intimately imagined social hierarchy and inner lives of the pachyderms are as layered — with spiritualism, intricate relationships among members of the herd and even poems and song — as any human family epic.

Yours truly,

Match Book

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