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The Clan of the Cave Bear (Earth's Children, #1)

Jean M. Auel

Start date: January 15, 2018

Finish date: January 22, 2018

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Jan 11, 2019 Dave rated it liked it

As a warning, this review may contains some very minor spoilers.

I can see why this book has enjoyed popularity in recent years. It was first published back in 1980, long before feminism became what it is today, but it no doubt resonates with postmodern feminism today. It is fantastic that we have stories with strong female lead characters, and there have been a plethora of great ones in recent decades. While I did enjoy The Clan of the Cave Bear, one of my biggest complaints is that Ayla, the st As a warning, this review may contains some very minor spoilers.

I can see why this book has enjoyed popularity in recent years. It was first published back in 1980, long before feminism became what it is today, but it no doubt resonates with postmodern feminism today. It is fantastic that we have stories with strong female lead characters, and there have been a plethora of great ones in recent decades. While I did enjoy The Clan of the Cave Bear, one of my biggest complaints is that Ayla, the strong female lead character, is just way too "amazing" to the point where it is sometimes difficult to suspend disbelief.

Ayla is a Cro-Magnon woman who, due to certain circumstances, is raised from a young age by a clan of Neanderthals who have effectively adopted her. Certainly Auel is implying that because she is Cro-Magnon, she is evolutionarily superior to her Neanderthal clan-mates. However, surely her environment would shape her much more so than her genetics, and she lived amongst the Neanderthals from a very young age. Yet by the age of ten, she can do almost everything better than any of her clan-mates. She has taught herself to make a sling and use it to hunt better than anyone else, despite having to do so in secret as women are forbidden from hunting or even touching a weapon. She suffers from bullying and rape that she can do little to counter, since women are inferior and must submit to men. She is exiled multiple times and must survive on her own for weeks in a very harsh climate. She gives birth to a child. She more or less discovers how pregnancy occurs, even though none of the Neanderthals have apparently made the connection, despite knowledge of more complex subjects like medicine. Ayla is such a super-woman in this story that it starts to fall into a predicable pattern of being subjected to one great adversity after another, and then overcoming each in turn in some fantastic way.

There were two other aspects of this story that grew tiresome as well. First was the endless stream-of-consciousness thinking by some of the characters that is spelled out frequently. Sometimes less is more, and this is one of those instances. Second is the fact that Ayla looks very different from the rest of the clan, and she too often despairs over (or at the very least comments on) her ugliness, while the reader realizes that she represents the true "Aryan ideal" appearance. This became tiresome over the course of the book.

Despite these gripes, The Clan of the Cave Bear was still a pretty enjoyable book, it just did not, for me, live up to some of the hype. I may at some point in the future go back to the series to continue the adventures of Ayla, but I was not compelled to jump immediately into the next book in the series.
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Sep 28, 2013 R.M. Ambrose rated it it was ok

Shelves: abandoned

The third person omniscient narrative voice was too omniscient, frequently using concepts of the modern world to describe the prehistoric. I can tolerate a little of this, but there was just too much. Even characters with little verbal language were thinking modern thoughts.

Human cultures are constantly evolving, so it bothered me when she described the clan's culture is frozen in time. When she said their traditions have become genetic traits, she totally lost me. ...more

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