Wednesday, 12 February 2025 07:46 pm
Book Review: The Clan of the Cave Bear
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deckardcanineI learned of Jean M. Auel's Earth's Children series as the source of the name for a prehistoric woman in Chrono Trigger (Square Enix games sure like synthesis). Further references, not least in Darwin's Radio, made me think I could use the cultural education. Indeed, it's rare for so many acquaintances to show familiarity with a book I'm reading that was published after 1965. This one's from 1980.
The titular cave-dwelling clan discovers a young girl alone and badly injured. Normally, they would have no dealings with "Others," but medicine woman Iza takes pity, adopts her, and persuades leader Brun and shaman Creb to formalize her membership. They call her Ayla, because they can't quite pronounce her birth name. Ayla gets healthy and wins over much of the clan with her helpful ways, but try as she might to blend in, she lacks their instincts and apparent collective unconscious. They can tolerate only so much deviation from tradition....
I infer that "the Others" are Cro-Magnons and that the clan members are all Neanderthals before Ayla joins, tho I suspect that another subspecies might reflect them more accurately. They never smile when happy, laugh when amused, or shed tears when stressed. They are much stockier than Ayla and, by her puberty, much shorter despite an erect posture. Their bones are too heavy for swimming as she does. Their faces jut out more, and her blonde hair is her only non-ugly trait to their eyes. They reach reproductive capacity around age eight and turn geriatric in their twenties. Their language consists of more signing than vocalizations.
Mental differences turn up as well. Ayla shows more accuracy with a sling than anyone else, probably because of an improved sense of timing. The rest barely have a concept of numbers. They usually act incurious about anything not covered in their dogma, seemingly more apathetic than hostile to the Others, and Ayla is discouraged from asking many questions. They haven't even formed a connection between sex and pregnancy, tho the taboo against sibling incest implies that their ancestors figured out something.
Nonetheless, I didn't normally see the clan as imbeciles, and sometimes their knowledge or emotional nuance impressed me. Sure, they constantly espouse a lot of dubious spiritual beliefs and enforce strict gender divisions that strongly disfavor women, but it's not hard to think of present-day cultures like that. It helps that clan dialog isn't translated into Tarzan talk and that we tend to focus on members whose roles require a lot of thinking.
Only Broud, the son of Brun (or the son of his mate, as they would put it) and presumptive next leader, is a focal fool. Arrogant, bigoted, rash, and temperamental, he doesn't need much of a reason to hate Ayla obsessively. Her life would be much more pleasant without him.
I'm going to spoil something, because it may make the difference in whether you want to read the book; besides, it's teased long in advance, especially in my copy with the character summaries up front: Broud repeatedly rapes Ayla, specifically to hurt her. This is even harsher in a culture where sex is never more private or consensual than in the animal world, because the naturally submissive women in the clan can't empathize with her.
Ayla may be extraordinarily defiant by clan standards, but no halfway-modern feminist would be satisfied with her low-level rebellion. She's way too eager to please the patriarchy. Rarely does she doubt their correctness. Not once does she consider punishing Broud at all.
Auel does a good job of getting me to care about people in the super-distant past and not find their lives boringly simple. I appreciate the trick of giving all the females two-syllable names that start and end with vowels and all the males one-syllable names that start and end with consonants, Broud being the only one with more than four letters.
That said, there's a pacing issue. Characters keep deliberating on things at length and repetitiously. Often I'd realize how little had happened in the past 15 pages. The nearly 500 pages could easily be cut in half. I also got annoyed at the lack of italics to distinguish characters' direct thoughts, which is all the more important amid omniscient narration that shifts spotlights between paragraphs.
I'm glad I read TCotCB, even if I came to debate whether I really ought to finish. I understand that later volumes actually reintroduce Ayla to more Homo sapiens sapiens, so I might want to check one out to compare. But it won't be any time soon.
Now I've picked up Brisingr by Christopher Paolini. I trust him to keep to a fair clip for younger readers' sake, and it's been a while since my last dragon book.
The titular cave-dwelling clan discovers a young girl alone and badly injured. Normally, they would have no dealings with "Others," but medicine woman Iza takes pity, adopts her, and persuades leader Brun and shaman Creb to formalize her membership. They call her Ayla, because they can't quite pronounce her birth name. Ayla gets healthy and wins over much of the clan with her helpful ways, but try as she might to blend in, she lacks their instincts and apparent collective unconscious. They can tolerate only so much deviation from tradition....
I infer that "the Others" are Cro-Magnons and that the clan members are all Neanderthals before Ayla joins, tho I suspect that another subspecies might reflect them more accurately. They never smile when happy, laugh when amused, or shed tears when stressed. They are much stockier than Ayla and, by her puberty, much shorter despite an erect posture. Their bones are too heavy for swimming as she does. Their faces jut out more, and her blonde hair is her only non-ugly trait to their eyes. They reach reproductive capacity around age eight and turn geriatric in their twenties. Their language consists of more signing than vocalizations.
Mental differences turn up as well. Ayla shows more accuracy with a sling than anyone else, probably because of an improved sense of timing. The rest barely have a concept of numbers. They usually act incurious about anything not covered in their dogma, seemingly more apathetic than hostile to the Others, and Ayla is discouraged from asking many questions. They haven't even formed a connection between sex and pregnancy, tho the taboo against sibling incest implies that their ancestors figured out something.
Nonetheless, I didn't normally see the clan as imbeciles, and sometimes their knowledge or emotional nuance impressed me. Sure, they constantly espouse a lot of dubious spiritual beliefs and enforce strict gender divisions that strongly disfavor women, but it's not hard to think of present-day cultures like that. It helps that clan dialog isn't translated into Tarzan talk and that we tend to focus on members whose roles require a lot of thinking.
Only Broud, the son of Brun (or the son of his mate, as they would put it) and presumptive next leader, is a focal fool. Arrogant, bigoted, rash, and temperamental, he doesn't need much of a reason to hate Ayla obsessively. Her life would be much more pleasant without him.
I'm going to spoil something, because it may make the difference in whether you want to read the book; besides, it's teased long in advance, especially in my copy with the character summaries up front: Broud repeatedly rapes Ayla, specifically to hurt her. This is even harsher in a culture where sex is never more private or consensual than in the animal world, because the naturally submissive women in the clan can't empathize with her.
Ayla may be extraordinarily defiant by clan standards, but no halfway-modern feminist would be satisfied with her low-level rebellion. She's way too eager to please the patriarchy. Rarely does she doubt their correctness. Not once does she consider punishing Broud at all.
Auel does a good job of getting me to care about people in the super-distant past and not find their lives boringly simple. I appreciate the trick of giving all the females two-syllable names that start and end with vowels and all the males one-syllable names that start and end with consonants, Broud being the only one with more than four letters.
That said, there's a pacing issue. Characters keep deliberating on things at length and repetitiously. Often I'd realize how little had happened in the past 15 pages. The nearly 500 pages could easily be cut in half. I also got annoyed at the lack of italics to distinguish characters' direct thoughts, which is all the more important amid omniscient narration that shifts spotlights between paragraphs.
I'm glad I read TCotCB, even if I came to debate whether I really ought to finish. I understand that later volumes actually reintroduce Ayla to more Homo sapiens sapiens, so I might want to check one out to compare. But it won't be any time soon.
Now I've picked up Brisingr by Christopher Paolini. I trust him to keep to a fair clip for younger readers' sake, and it's been a while since my last dragon book.