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 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!)