The Seventh Son

THE SEVENTH SON
Sebastian Faulks
Penguin Random House

REVIEWED BY CUSHLA McKINNEY

The villain of Sebastian Faulks’ 16th novel, Australian billionaire entrepreneur Lukas Parn, believes the development of self-awareness is what differentiated Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens: an evolutionary leap allowing us to make cathedrals and great art, but also rendering us warlike and prone to psychosis and dementia.  

So, with suitably Technobro-messianism, Parn sets out to test his theory by covertly fertilising the ova of an IVF patient at one of his private clinics with a synthetically-generated Neanderthal sperm.

The resulting child, Seth, is followed as he grows to adulthood to identify neurological and psychological differences from his fully-sapient peers, an experiment presumably destined to end in tragedy. I, however, cannot tell you because I did not make it that far.

Despite being described as “a spectacular examination of what it is to be human”, Faulk’s turgid, pseudo-science-laden prose and two-dimensional characters left me cold.

Seth does not see the point of art or anticipate the future, has a sixth sense for animals, is magnetically attractive to women, and generally fails to rise above the stereotypical ‘noble savage’.

His fellow cast members are similarly flat and caricatured, and I did not care enough about any of them to stay the distance.

Cushla McKinney is a Dunedin scientist