Neanderthals were prone to depression, he said.
He said they were prone to addiction, too, and especially smoking. [first line]
That opening hooked me, though it's not exactly indicative of the novel as a whole... Sadie Smith (not her real name) is thirty-four, a heavy drinker, a former FBI operative now employed as a translator for Bruno Lacombe, an ageing revolutionary who lives in a cave and communicates with his disciple Pascal Balmy by email. Bruno's emails are full of Neanderthals, genetics and Cagots -- this last a 'sub-human' people of the Pyrenees who Bruno likes to think are descended from Neanderthals. Meanwhile Pascal's commune of anarchist activists is determined to defeat government-backed agricultural businesses, which threaten the way of life in this corner of south-west France.
Sadie has been employed by shadowy figures to subvert the anarchists' plots, and starts off by infiltrating the commune and embarking on a relationship with one of the men there. Luckily she's something of a sociopath: other people's realities don't impinge upon or impact her life. (Though there's the heavy drinking...) We are shown glimpses of her past, and there's some discussion of undercover agents (such as Bob Lambert) and hints that Sadie may have been let go by the FBI due to being rather too enthusiastic about convincing activists to commit violent crimes.
Bruno is fascinating, though completely batshit. We get some of his wartime backstory, too, and I found this remarkably poignant. Lucien, Sadie's erstwhile lover (from whom she's borrowing the house where she's staying) is a mere cipher, and Rene (Sadie's activist mark) is almost sterotypical in his brusque masculinity. Sadie is the focus of the novel, though: she's not exactly likeable, but I found myself admiring her detachment and, by way of contrast, her (secret) moments of humanity. Her sense of humour also charmed me. ("I thought, Fuck you, Pascal. “Having you here has meant a lot to me,” Pascal said. Like most people, he was unable to read minds." [loc. 3864]).
A pacy novel with a surprising ending, some fascinating excursions into history and prehistory, and a narrator who refuses to be dismayed by climate change, the horrors of capitalism, or the soon-to-be-released court records from her FBI entrapment case. I'm still not sure if I liked it, but it held my attention and made me think.
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