Anthill by Edward O. Wilson, a review
I wanted to like this book. I really did. E. O. Wilson is a fine science writer and certainly knows his stuff, and maybe that's the problem with this book. Have you ever had a conversation with someone who feels the need to include every single detail and every possible bit of knowledge surrounding a subject even if none of it has much to do with the story? That's Wilson's Anthill. The overly detailed narrative and lack of action is like trudging through mud in heavy boots. Even when he gets around to writing about sex I found myself saying, "OK, yeah, I get it. Move on already!"
The first forty percent of the story reads like a transcript to an uninteresting PBS documentary on post-antebellum society where the most exciting aspect of the documentary is the word post-antebellum. The narrative picks up slightly when Wilson pens the Anthill Chronicles section, but not much. This section reads like the voice over for a Discovery Channel series following an ant colony. This is the section I kept reading for and I was, unfortunately, disappointed. The narrative falls victim to the same over-attention to tedious detail and also suffers from a fair amount of anthropomorphism--see, Wilson wants to make sure we get the part where ants and humans share many parallels so he frequently makes "just like humans" references. And guess what? Turns out people are like ant gods! That's right. The ants view our big shadowy tree-like selves as gods who like to leave manna from heaven behind for the ants to find.
The are plenty of problems with the basic storyline--believability, character consistency, etc. But any of those problems are overshadowed by the drudgery of the prose. I had to take a few breaks and read some other things in order to prevent my brain from solidifying. I can't think of anyone I would recommend this book to. Like I said, I really wanted to like this book but just ended up wondering why I stuck with it to the end.
