The Wild Blog in the West

As I mentioned last time , after sucking down The Clan of the Cave Bear  in just a few days, 14-year old me grabbed ahold of its sequel.  I was so excited.  The ending of  Clan  was so powerful and emotional -- what could Auel possibly have in store for us next?  Would Ayla be reunited with her family?  Would we see how Durc was treated once Ayla was gone?  At this point, anything was possible. I tore open the novel and read the first chapter. "She was dead.  What did it matter if icy needles of freezing rain flayed her skin raw."  Yes, yes!  I read as Ayla forged ahead alone, haunted by her final moments with the Clan, until she ended up in "cool, green, sheltered valley" where horses were grazing.  Then... Wait -- who were Jondalar and Thonolan?  I skimmed ahead through their chapter, looking for some connection to Ayla, but there was none.  Next chapter, Ayla was still in the valley.  Next chapter, Jondalar and Thonolan and their not-very-interesting adventur

I was just the right age when I received my induction into the world of Jean Auel: 14 years old.  My mother handed me a second-hand copy of The Clan of the Cave Bear , telling me that a friend of hers recommended it, but not telling me what it was about.  At 14, I was reading "grown up" novels, but not novels that had explicit sex and violence.  I was also still young enough to identify with Ayla, the novel's protagonist.  So I sucked Clan down in just a few days, and quickly grabbed its sequel, The Valley of Horses .  I was fortunate that the first four Earth's Children novels had already been published. As I mentioned last time , The Clan of the Cave Bear premiered with a splash in 1980* and is still regarded as Jean Auel's best novel.  Unlike its widely panned film version , Clan was regarded as a serious work of fiction, using research available at the time to reconstruct a world that was practically forgotten.  That the author herself was not a professio

Replica of a painting in the Chauvet Cave in France. The original is thought to be 31,000 years old. I said in my last update that at some point I would tackle a book critique.  I've decided to think big and do six... Jean Auel's six, that is. For those who are unfamiliar, Jean Auel's Earth's Children series began in 1980 with The Clan of the Cave Bear , about a Cro-Magnon girl losing her family in the prehistoric era and being raised by a clan of Neanderthals.   Clan became a runaway best seller and quickly established Auel as an author to watch.  Notably,  Clan  was not only the first novel of the series, but also Auel's first novel ever.  In fact, I think it was the first piece of  fiction  that she had ever written.  Let that sink in for a moment.   Within 10 years, The Clan of the Cave Bear  was followed by three other door-stopper best sellers:  The Valley of Horses (1982),  The Mammoth Hunters  (1985), and The Plains of Passage  (1990).  Then pr