Life Before Man is a novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 by Canadian

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 writer Margaret Atwood

Margaret Atwood

Margaret Eleanor Atwood, is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, and environmental activist. She is among the most-honoured authors of fiction in recent history; she is a winner of the Arthur C...

. It was first published by McClelland and Stewart

McClelland and Stewart

McClelland & Stewart Limited is a Canadian publishing company. It is partially owned by Random House of Canada, now a subsidiary of Bertelsmann....

 in 1979

1979 in literature

The year 1979 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-New books:*Douglas Adams - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy*V.C...

 and was a finalist for the Governor General's Award

1979 Governor General's Awards

Each winner of the 1979 Governor General's Awards for Literary Merit was selected by a panel of judges administered by the Canada Council for the Arts. The 1979 awards were the first in which a list of finalists was released a month before the presentation of the awards...

.

The novel has three principal characters: Nate, Elizabeth and Lesje. Nate and Elizabeth are an unhappily married

Marriage

Marriage is a social union or legal contract between people that creates kinship. It is an institution in which interpersonal relationships, usually intimate and sexual, are acknowledged in a variety of ways, depending on the culture or subculture in which it is found...

 couple, with both husband and wife involved extramarital affairs. Lesje, pronounced 'Lashia,' is Nate's lover of Ukrainian ancestry and works along with his wife in the museum of natural history as a paleontologist

Paleontology

Paleontology "old, ancient", ὄν, ὀντ- "being, creature", and λόγος "speech, thought") is the study of prehistoric life. It includes the study of fossils to determine organisms' evolution and interactions with each other and their environments...

 fascinated by dinosaur

Dinosaur

Dinosaurs are a diverse group of animals of the clade and superorder Dinosauria. They were the dominant terrestrial vertebrates for over 160 million years, from the late Triassic period until the end of the Cretaceous , when the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event led to the extinction of...

s, giving the book its title. Elizabeth, said to have been inspired by Shirley Gibson, ex-wife of Atwood's partner Graeme Gibson

Graeme Gibson

Graeme C. Gibson, CM is a Canadian novelist who lives in Toronto, Ontario. He is a Member of the Order of Canada , and was one of the organizers of the Writer's Union of Canada . He has a long term relationship with the novelist and poet Margaret Atwood.In 1996 he decided to stop writing novels...

, also takes a lover, Chris, who recently committed suicide

Suicide

Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Suicide is often committed out of despair or attributed to some underlying mental disorder, such as depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, alcoholism, or drug abuse...

. All three of the novel's main characters influence the narration, with each chapter presenting events from a particular character's perspective.

Reception and reviews

Feminist author Marilyn French gave the novel a glowing review in the New York Times, calling it a "splendid, fully integrated work."