Ms Auel, there are some things I’d like to talk to you about. Be warned I’m quite angry because I keep reading your books for some bizarre reason and I cringe and tear my hair out in despair. See, you had a good story there – a little Cro-Magnon orphan girl found and raised by Neanderthals. I didn’t even care she turned out to be the smartest, most beautiful, ingenious little thing and the villain in the story was almost grotesque and cartoonish in his evildoing. I knew no real harm would ever come Ayla’s way, she would survive it all and meanwhile invent an iPhone. It’s all ok, it’s comfort reading after all. It’s the writing I had many different problems with.

First of all – point of view.

"The plentiful supply of drinking water kept dehydration from making its dangerous contribution to hypothermia, the lowering of body temperature that brought death from exposure, but she was getting weak."

I’m sorry, what? It’s 35000 BC, I don’t want to hear things like ‘hypothermia’ or ‘diuretic’ or ‘evolution’. I didn’t need that foreshadowing of the 20th century. I wanted a story as seen through the eyes of prehistorical people and I’d seriously take anything the author threw my way, there would be no limits to my suspension of disbelief. But since I had that constant running commentary that sounded like something from a BBC documentary I was forced to get out the story and look at it from a dispassionate, modern point of view, which inevitably led me to the conclusion that half of it was unbelievable bollocks.

"All those primitive people, with almost no frontal lobes, and speech limited by undeveloped vocal organs, but with huge brains—larger than any race of man then living or future generations yet unborn—were unique. They were the culmination of a branch of mankind whose brain was developed in the back of their heads, in the occipital and the parietal regions that control vision and bodily sensation and store memory."

No! You can’t put paragraphs like that in a STORY! Did you copy it from an encyclopedia? You're confusing research with copy-pasting.

The narrative finally jumped the shark when it implied that Neanderthal women were scared of learning new things because with their hereditary memory (yeah, me neither) their children would keep having larger and larger heads which eventually would lead to more difficult births and higher infant and mother mortality rate, ergo decline of the race and evolutionary cul-de-sac. No, I’m serious.

And here is why Broud (the villain) hates Ayla:

"but the real problem was she was not Clan. […] Her brain followed different paths, her full, high forehead that housed forward-thinking frontal lobes gave her an understanding from a different view."

Yes. He hated her because of her forward-thinking frontal lobes.

But when Auel gives the voice to Ayla, her stream of conscience is even worse than the droning of the main narrator. It’s like listening to someone on amphetamines.

"I’ll dig some roots on the way back. Iza says the roots are good for Creb’s rheumatism, too. I hope the fresh cherry bark will help Iza’s cough. She’s getting better, I think, but she’s so skinny. Uba’s getting so big and heavy, Iza shouldn’t lift her at all. Maybe I’ll bring Uba with me next time, if I can. I’m so glad we didn’t have to give her to Oga. She’s really starting to talk now. It’ll be fun when she gets a little bigger and we can go out together. Look at those pussy willows. Funny how they feel like real fur when they’re small like that, but they grow out green. The sky is so blue today. I can smell the sea in the wind. I wonder when we’ll be going fishing. The water should be warm enough to swim in soon. I wonder why no one else likes to swim? The sea tastes salty, not like the stream, but I feel so light in it. I can hardly wait until we go fishing. I think I love sea fish best of all, but I like eggs, too."

Second – repetitions. For god’s sake. I know we homo sapiens sapiens don’t have as good memory as Neanderthals but I’m pretty sure your average human doesn’t need to have a piece of information repeated every five pages. This book could easily be 150 pages without losing anything. A perfect candidate for Reader’s Digest’s condesations.

Another problem – showing… and then telling. Because we all readers are completely dumb and we don’t get it.

"I see you and Dorv put your slings to good use. I could smell the meat cooking halfway up the hill,” Brun continued. “When we get settled in the new cave, we’ll have to find a place to practice. The clan would benefit if all the hunters had your skill with the sling, Zoug. And it won’t be long before Vorn will need to be trained.” The leader was aware of the contribution the older men still made to the sustenance of the clan and wanted them to know it.”

Why was that last sentence needed? This is exactly what the dialogue implied! Ms. Auel, are you disrespecting me?

We know that Ayla doesn’t remember ever seeing any humans that look like her, only Neanderthals, so it’s obvious she would have body image problems, feel ugly, big, deformed. It’s implied many times but just in case we don’t understand why a tall, slim, blue-eyed blond girl might feel ugly, Auel explains, repeatedly:

"For as long as she could remember, Ayla had never seen anyone except people of the clan. She had
no other standard of measure. They had grown accustomed to her, but to herself, she looked different from everyone around her, abnormally different."

On top of that all sort of other random nonsense.

"She simply hadn’t been able to grasp the concept of talking with movement. That it was even possible had never occurred to her; it was totally beyond her realm of experience."

Really? She invents pretty much anything and understand calculus but has never seen anyone gesticulate? That’s almost second nature to every human. If you meet someone who speaks a different language and you try to communicate with them, you almost automatically resort to gestures, so don’t even give me that bullshit.

Yet another problem was that Auel obviously confused description with enumerations. It’s not that there were too many descriptions in this book; it’s that they were all boring. She even managed to make those little Neanderthal Olympic Games sound boring. I’d love for someone to pay me to rewrite this whole thing.

And there were NO sexy scenes in this volume!

I am almost ashamed to admit that I also read book two, and it was only around page 30 of the book three that I managed to snap out of it and decided I just couldn’t do it any longer. It was like crack, it was ruining my life.

Emotional, interesting, and it left a deep impact that won't soon be forgotten. My dear sweet mother ♡ suggested that I read this series so...on to the next one.

Yesterday was one of those moments where I finished a book and went "...Damn, I wish I'd known while reading this that it would make it onto that really short list of books I wish I could read again for the first time." I probably would have savoured it more.

Buddy read with Caught Between Pages. Thanks for the lovely discussions about unlovely things :)
And this book is full of unlovely things.

Ayla is a cro-magnon child separated from her people. She is taken in by a clan of Neanderthals, less evolved than the cro-magnon, and raised to live by their methods. It's equally a story of love and abuse. Love from some of her newfound family, but abuse from a man who can't understand her desire for more than her assigned role as a female in the clan.

For anyone else who doesn't know too much about Neanderthals vs Cro Magnons, like me, all you have to know is that the cro-magnon (like Ayla) were of the same species as us, and that the Neanderthals (who raised Ayla) were a separate species, though we do share some of their DNA from interbreeding. The cro-magnons eventually replaced the Neanderthals when the Neanderthals failed to keep evolving.

n  n

Clan of the Cave Bear had the power to make me absolutely livid, without making me angry at the author or the book itself. This book is ultimately one girl's fight to fit in and her journey towards a greater equality than what she's been told she has the right to. So of course it's full of all kinds of horrible treatment of women, and of course it's going to make a modern reader a bit frustrated, but (as in my case) completely fascinate them as well. It's so interesting to read about the clan's reasoning for dividing the gender roles so clearly. It makes sense in a way given that species' limited ability to learn and retain too many skills, but it's really satisfying to see such a great character challenge that.

I think that dynamic is what made this book so riveting to me. Here you have this really advanced girl being raised by a species who are essentially backwards by comparison. Despite trying her best to conform to their ways, that extra little bit of forebrain power sparks a rebellious nature in her which pretty much leads to every critical point in the novel. And maybe it's just me, but that is so freaking cool. And kind of tragic.

The writing:
The writing is a bit simplistic and kind of gets in the way at times. I read the sentence "She woke up screaming!" three times in this book. Why is there an exclamation mark in prose outside of dialogue? There are also some painstakingly long sections about herbal plant applications, and many of the concepts and ideals of the clan are repeated ad nauseam.

The characters:
Ayla is such a well-developed protagonist. It's nice to be able to so firmly identify myself as being on a character's side from the first few chapters in a book. Usually an author has to convince me to like their characters but this one was so easy. I just love her.
The antagonist is perfectly horrible.

"Hello I am a researchere who has given up my life to study neanderthals and my story telling skills are roughly equivalent to those of my subjects"should be Jean's introduction to her work, "as I believe fiction should be written in the form of a dull and tedious encyclopaedia."

Note, March 25, 2014: I edited this review slightly just now, to delete one accidental dittography. Hmmm, I thought I'd proofread this.... :-)

Auel's Earth's Children series (this opening volume was followed by, so far, four sequels) garners mixed --and mostly negative-- reviews here on Goodreads. Though none of them have reviewed it, a dozen of my Goodreads friends have given it ratings, ranging from one star to five. Obviously, my own reaction falls at the favorable end of the spectrum.

Ayla, of course, is a Cro-Magnon (i.e., an anatomically modern human; you and I are "Cro-Magnons" too, in that anthropological sense) orphaned by a natural disaster and raised by a clan of Neanderthals. For a writer of historical fiction, a prehistoric setting poses a challenge; technically, the genre embraces any fiction set in the past, but its authors usually depend heavily on written records for events and background material, and for the Ice Age, no such records exist. To her credit, Auel was the first writer in the genre to attempt it on a large scale (though Jack London and William Golding each wrote single novels set in prehistory), and to popularize it sufficiently to create a market niche and a subgenre tradition that other writers have begun to develop. In place of written records, she immersed herself in the exhaustive study of every known aspect of the physical evidence from the period, and all of the various scholarly interpretations of it. Her reconstruction of both Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal natural history, society and culture is of course speculative; but it is based meticulously on this research. Even the more controversial features of her Neanderthals --their "Memories," a genetically-transmitted racial memory of past experiences, and their difficulty with verbal speech (and consequent preference for sign language)-- have grounds in known Neanderthal physiology, such as their hyper-developed back brains, which control memory. (Although Auel is an evolutionist, she recognizes Neanderthals as "a branch of humanity" and depicts them as fully human, not as the "ape-men" who figure in London's Before Adam or Conan Doyle's The Lost World --a point in her favor.)

A weakness of Auel's writing is the converse of her strong research: she has a tendency to want to divulge every iota of erudition she has on the Ice Age world, and doesn't always seamlessly integrate it into the narrative. She also has a penchant for explicitly detailed sex, which in my estimation is not a plus. Here, however, neither of these flaws are as marked as they are in the later books (the latter because the plot here affords little occasion for it --Ayla doesn't yet have a love interest, though that gets remedied later on. :-)) IMO, her strong points outweigh these. First and foremost, she has a capacity to create fully alive, three-dimensional characters whom the reader can relate to (positively or negatively) just like real people --Iza, Creb, Brun, Broud, even several of the minor characters; and above all Ayla herself, as we watch her grow from a scared, traumatized child into a strong, highly competent and intelligent woman. Indeed, she's much too strong, competent and intelligent for some of the Clan to accept in a woman (and judging from critical and reader reactions, some moderns aren't very cool with it either! :-))

That brings up another strong point of the book --Auel's intelligent engaging of serious issues that are still relevant to our lives today. Gender roles are the most obvious; against the backdrop of the male- dominated Clan, Ayla makes a lived-out case for a genuine feminism (of the equalitarian rather than male-bashing sort) that argues for social roles based on demonstrated ability and interests, not gender. But the book also addresses issues of interracial and cross-cultural relations, and the conflict between inflexible tradition and cultural inertia, represented by the change-resistant Clan ("It's never been done before!" is leader Brun's characteristic refrain, which became a byword in our household :-)), vs. needed adaptation to changing conditions. Also, Ayla's fight to save the life of her infant son (conceived in a rape) provides a powerful pro-life message --though that may well have been unintended on Auel's part. (But as D. H. Lawrence said, "Trust the tale and not the teller." :-))

All in all, I consider this one of the better contemporary American novels in any genre, and regard Ayla as one of the greatest fictional characters --and best female role models-- in modern literature. (The series was one that I read out loud to my wife; it also became one of her all-time favorites, and she re-reads it periodically on her own!)

Pues a mí esta serie en su día me gustó bastante. Creo que la autora está bastante bien documentada en temas prehistóricos.
Y trata de forma creíble el tema de la posible convivencia e interacción entre Sapiens y Neandertales.

I came to The Clan of the Cave Bear at the Mission Viejo Library when the novel I'd wanted next -- The Witching Hour by Anne Rice -- was out. Wandering the hardcover fiction, a row of books at eye level with thick, colorful spines and the same author snared my attention. Published in 1980, this bestseller launched five sequels, a maligned film adaptation in 1986 and became an industry onto Jean M. Auel, whose published fiction has been dedicated solely to this Ice Age series.

Set in the late Pleistocene Epoch as many as 35,000 years ago and in an area that looks suspiciously like the present day Crimean Peninsula, of all places, The Clan of the Cave Bear begins with a 5-year-old girl named Ayla whose tribe is wiped out in an earthquake while she's off swimming in a stream. After nearly becoming a meal of the cave lions, Ayla is found starving and badly wounded by a tribe of wanderers who've also been displaced by the quake.

Brown haired, stocky and bow legged, the leader of the wanderers, Brun, recognizes Ayla as one of "The Others", a tribe that's blonde haired, lean and tall. Communicating with sign language and grunts as much as words, Brun ignores Ayla ("Not clan") but his medicine woman, a 30 year old senior citizen named Iza, takes pity on the girl and brings her back from the dead. The wanderers are desperately in search of shelter and it's Ayla who directs Iza's attention to a perfect cave.

One of the chief reasons to read the novel is Auel's credible portrayal of Ayla as the ultimate outsider, the First Outsider, who grows to maturity with the sense that she's different from everyone else and struggles to find her purpose. Ayla looks other clan members in the eye, a major faux pas for a woman. Her physique permits her the ability to swim, which she uses to save the life of a clan member from drowning.

Ayla's curiosity also leads her to teach herself how to use a sling and hunt with it, a crime punishable by death when the offender is a woman. Auel mines a great deal of tension by pitting Ayla against Broud, the ill-tempered son of Brun and heir apparent to the clan's leadership who is deeply offended by Ayla's ways and engages her in a battle of wills. I kept reading because I wanted to see the moment Ayla stood up for herself and went all Tina Turner to Ike, in this case, Broud.

Auel's research (begun in 1977 in consultation with numerous experts) offers interesting glimpses into prehistoric survival, the work of female gatherers preparing foods and medicines, and the work of male hunters tracking and killing game, most memorably, a trek north to hunt mammoth. My attention waned when it came to descriptions of religious rites where there seemed to be far less at stake (no chance of anyone getting injured or killed).

While the characters have forgotten more about the natural world than you or I will ever know, their weakness is a shortened life span; Ayla reaches womanhood and achieves status as Woman Who Hunts by age 10. I found the biology of the characters to be unique, a facet lost in the film version with Daryl Hannah, 25 years old and 5'10", cast in the role of Ayla.

The major weakness of The Clan of the Cave Bear is Auel's geriatric writing, which is plodding, and tells and tells and tells. I consider myself intelligent enough to imagine what characters are thinking or feeling by how they act and what they say to each other. I scanned the last 100 pages. There was simply not enough at stake -- at no point does the reader consider Auel's heroine might be killed -- and the author's visible attempt at writing kept me from becoming absorbed in the world she was creating.

Fortunately, writing takes a back seat for me. I can excuse a lot of telling versus showing if the author creates a compelling character, builds a fantastic world and dares me to put down the book without knowing what's going to happen to the character. I'm recommending this to readers with an interest in the prehistoric world or an interest in how to build a series. I can't say Auel hooked me into reading the sequels, but for a debut novel, this is a good one.

I couldn't resist not to put on paper what itched my mind when I finished the first book of the "Earth's Children" series, brilliantly written, researched, and imagined by Jean Auel and named "The Clan of the Cave Bear". I think I mentioned once earlier that when it comes to novels or movies, one particular way of story telling I prefer the most.

No matter what the genre is, I do like all stories with strong characters in lead roles. This is probably the main reason why I keep remembering their names instead of the titles of the books, movies, or shows. For example, I am a big fan of Mulder, House, Holden, Langdon, Valter, Kirk, Kate, Piper, Cross, Kovacs, Maximus, Hal, Woody, Neo, Yoda, Doc Brown, etc., and if you ask me to write all the titles of these characters' stories, I would probably have to google and find out the most of them. With "Earth's Children" novels, I am sure I gain one more name to the pile.

It is still fresh in my brain today, but I am sure if you, in the (near) future, ask me for a recommendation of the best and most iconic prehistoric adventures of ancient Neanderthal clans and their interactions with homo sapiens, I would most likely say go and read about Ayla.

I have to admit that I got fed up with all the repetitions and sex scenes, but it was worthwhile read nonetheless. Or watch the movie with Darryl Hannah made in 1986 based on the first book only. Or wait for the probable upcoming FOX TV show, even though it is uncertain that it will be brought to life at this point. Nevertheless, Earth's Children definitely deserves the screen, even though it has to be a high-budget project, filmed with heavy usage of special effects similar to those used in 'Rise (Down) of the Planet of the Apes' and to use all scientific breakthroughs to picture Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons in a proper way.

Full review

Ayla is just 5 years old when she loses her entire family and everyone she has ever known to a cave in caused by an earthquake. Completely alone and without the skills she needs to survive she wanders aimlessly until she is injured by a cave lion and she is close to death when members of the Clan of the Cave Bear find her. Iza is a medicine woman and although the child is one of the "Others" (a Cro-Magnon human) and very different to the Clan (who are Neanderthals) she is unable to walk away from a child who is in pain. With the permission of the Clan leader Brun she takes the young child with her and helps to heal her wounds. Ayla now finds herself living amongst a people who are very different to the ones she was born to, first she must learn to communicate but the hardest thing is to adopt their traditions and behave in the manor that is expected of her. She grows to love those who care for her but she makes an enemy of Broud, the future leader of the Clan, which is sure to cause problems for her in the future.

I have been a huge fan of this series for about 10 years now and despite the fact I've read all of the books at least 5 times I still love The Clan of the Cave Bear as much as I did the very first time I read it. Set around 35,000 years ago at the time of the last Ice Age this is the first book in an epic series that follows Ayla on her journey from child to adult. This series is like taking a step back in time and it feels like you have experienced everything that Ayla goes through right alongside her.

Ayla is without a doubt one of my favorite fictional characters, she suffers so much hardship but she never gives in and she always fights to survive. Her life with the Clan isn't easy, their traditions are very different to those she was brought up with and she finds it hard to understand why she isn't allowed to do the things she wants to do. She is adopted by Iza who is an incredibly skilled medicine woman and Creb who is the Clan's Mog-Ur (spiritual leader). Iza and Creb are both fantastic characters, they have taken in a young child despite her differences and do their best to love her and keep her safe. I can assure you you'll never think of Neanderthals in the same way after getting to know the members of the Clan, each of them are so realistic it feels like you have actually met them.

Jean M. Auel's descriptions of the Clan's way of life and the land in which they live are fascinating and show the amount of research that has gone into the creation of the series. She manages to impart an incredible amount of information but it is done in such a way that I didn't once feel bored when reading in fact I loved learning about the medicinal uses for plants, the tools they use and how they were made. Although this series is marketed as young adult I would recommend it for older teens and adults. The Clan of the Cave Bear does contain a rape scene that some may find difficult to read but this isn't included for dramatic effect, it fits in well with the story and I believe was something that needed to be included. This series shows all sides of life both good and bad which is one of the things that makes it so interesting to read. I have no doubt that after reading this story you will be just as hooked as I am and I'm sure you'll end up devouring the rest of the series!

I really liked this book so much that I even acquired a copy, however, after reading it the first time, I felt deceived. Seeing as 150 people shelved this as "romance", I started it and expected you know, a love story. I assumed Broud would be her love interest since he was a main character and guessed he and Ayla would have an enemies-to-lovers plot line or something. He treated her really badly (understatement) but I let it go because I assumed he'd have to beg for her forgiveness (hero-groveling is a weakness of mine). I get to the second to last page (there are 512 in this book, so I had been waiting for quite some time) desperately anticipating the moment Broud realizes his love for Ayla (they say hate is like love, don't they?) and then what does he do? He attempts to murder her.

...

...

...

@#$%!!!

Seriously, people, I know the rest of this series focuses on romance, but this book does not, so please don't shelve it as such! It's misleading.

This was a fantastic book. I read it in 7th grade, and was absolutely obsessed with it (which is nothing less than stunning, because at that age most books that lacked dragons weren't worth my time...). In a way its perfect for around that age, because its all about struggling for acceptance and trying to learn the social norms of a society. But really, everybody has dealt with those issues, and will be able to empathize with the characters. And the setting is so unique, the writing so vibrant, that I imagine most people will find themselves engaged.

The rest of the series isn't nearly as good. Valley of the Horses is fun but lacking the depth. I stopped reading them after the third book in the series.

I first read this book many years ago, simply because it was in the small collection of books my father left behind when my parents split. Another girl I knew read them too, and between us we managed to track down the whole collection. Was this appropriate reading for a 12 year old? Probably not, but it fostered an interest in history that went on through my teens, and I sure learned a lot from the next few books about romance -coughcough-

At the time, it was probably among my favorite books and I have to say that fondness has stayed with me. It's only been tarnished by how much I HATED the final book, but enough time has passed since that horrible experience that I can read this without remembering. I am going to read at least the first four books in the next few weeks, because I can't wait to read the parts with Baby and Jondalar again. It was a stand out book then and it still is. Others have touched on this series with the same kind of setting or historical nod, but nothing beats this one.

A great book, and part of a great series. Always five stars! PS. I have left my original review on this as well, so the next part is that review.

I can't believe I haven't read this book in over six years, because it is one of my absolute favorites and I'm kind of disappointed in myself. :( This series with the exception of the last book, still remain in my absolute favorites list, despite this fact. Even if not all of the information and history is correct, I always felt like I learned so much from this book and it hit me in the imagination like very few others. Hoping I can read it again soon!