There is a kind of television documentary that relies heavily on invented dialogue to convey information without the use of a narrator. This can work well for that medium. But there is also a kind of book that uses the same device when dealing with historical figures, without any justification at all. The Man Who Found the Missing Link is an example. The story told by the anthropologist Pat Shipman is an important and interesting one: that of the life of Eugène Dubois, who, just over a hundred years ago, travelled to the Dutch East Indies and discovered the fossil remains of Java man, which were seen at the time as the first direct evidence of an evolutionary link between human beings and apes. But the way she tells the story completely alienates the reader (or this one, at least). From the beginning, where we are let in on the (made up) thoughts of an elderly Dubois as he reads a letter from an old friend in Java, to the end, where we are privy to those of hypothetical German soldiers on patrol in occupied Holland, the best that can be said of Shipman’s style is that at least it is consistent. It is also verbose, and the story could have been told more effectively in half the space.

Subscribe or Sign In to read the full article