![]() ![]() His evildoing felt cartoonish and grotesque. I thought that Broud was an unconvincing villain. It was unthinkable that a child, a girl child at that, could reason her way to that conclusion so easily. “I will be old enough to have a baby in this many years,” she gestured with assurance, positive of her deduction. She put down the first hand and held up only three fingers. Her next action caught him completely by surprise, it was a concept he had spent years mastering himself. “When I am this many?” she asked, holding out her eight fingers again. Ayla looked at her other hand, and immediately held up three fingers, folding down her thumb and forefinger. With only one hand, it had been especially difficult for him when he was learning. Creb made three more slash marks, and put three fingers over them. It had taken many repetitions before Goov had understood. ![]() How had the girl been able to grasp the idea so quickly? She hadn’t even asked what slash marks had to do with fingers, or what either had to do with years. I don’t know how much of it was true (especially the cultural stuff), but it was realistic.Ĭreb was thunderstruck. My favourite thing about this book is looking at the differences and similarities between humans and Neanderthals. I could really sympathise with Ayla’s struggles to fit in so much of the book felt familiar and relatable to modern experiences. It was a gripping story about people and their relationships, many of which appear unchanged for thousands of years. However, the son of the leader’s mate, Broud, hates her and does everything he can to make Ayla’s life miserable. The medicine woman, Iza, adopts her as her daughter as teaches her about herbs and healing. ‘The Clan,’ as they call themselves, come to love Ayla, despite her strange actions and ugly (they think) appearance. Ayla is a young cro-magnon human taken in by a group of Neanderthals after her people are killed in an earthquake. Set in prehistoric Europe, this is the first book in the Earth’s Children series. AYLA CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR FULLPlease see our full disclosure for further information. It was a story she’d tell for twenty years, as proof of my incredible laziness.This post may contain affiliate links, which means I may receive a commission, at no extra cost to you, if you make a purchase through a link. She found me unmoved, incurious about her arrival, deaf to her scolding. By the time she arrived, it was mostly out, just a few smoking clumps of grass in our blackened backyard. It’s on the back of the house, I guess.”Īlarmed, she called the fire department (a formality given how far we lived from town) and drove six miles to help extinguish the blaze. I answered it absently, explaining that my mother couldn’t talk she was putting out a fire. ![]() On the coffee table behind me, the phone rang. Her journey into civilization held hope for mine. But if there was anyone more benighted than me, it was Ayla. What was I supposed to do with Sergio’s lips? What if I did it wrong, and he laughed at me? It was mortifying to consider. Like so much of adolescence this felt like a surrender, an inevitable giving in, and I didn’t understand what awaited me on the other side, or what could ever compensate me for my hat or my freedom or long summer days tramping through creek beds. For his sake, I’d even considered taking off my hat and combing my hair-a thing I’d once fought like a wildcat to prevent. I spent a lot of time thinking about a boy named Sergio’s lips. I’d begun to develop what my grandmother called, ominously, “a figure.” Instead of racking boys, I’d begun loitering nonviolently in their presence, wondering if they liked me, wanting them to like me. AYLA CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR SERIESIt wasn’t until the series abandoned all literary pretense and became a batshit crazy romance that I got hooked. In The Clan of the Cave Bear, the first (and arguably best) book in the series, she uses her wits to overcome rape and rejection at the hands of her adoptive Neanderthals.īut if I’m being honest, I mostly endured the triumph-of-the-human-spirit stuff. She was a Cave Barbie who could rock a wolf-hide minidress just as easily as she could trap, kill, and eat a wild horse. This made Ayla-the Cro-Magnon heroine of the novels-doubly compelling. But I was also a tomboy who’d spent elementary school chewing Copenhagen, stuffing my hair up in a denim hat, and kicking boys in the balls. Like a lot of girls, I was drawn to pretty, dreamy things. It was a thrill to find something that featured a living woman: a statuesque blonde gripping a spear and gazing off into some mythic distance. She was a reader of legal dramas, so most of her books were black and austere, with gavels or bloody fingerprints on the cover. Auel’s Earth ’ s Children series on my grandmother’s bookshelf. ![]()
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