You won't believe that this spectacular first volume of Earth
Children series by Jean M. Auel is her first Novel ! A
rich mixture of wonderful story telling skill, excellent
naration, unbelievably interesting plot and time, and the
fruitation of years and years of painful research and
experience. You gotta read it to believe it !
This remarkable girl Ayala was orphaned in a natural calamity during
the Neanderthal period and resqued by a great medicine women of Flat
heads. They have not evolved yet as human beings and call the
Ayala Other. Crude cave
practices and witch craft prevails and
there is no spoken language. Just signs. Ayala is raised by
the
clan and becomes clan. Though she is a beautiful girl, she
believes that she is ugly.
In order to make a difference, she secretly practices the
hunting techniques reserverd for men. Hunting by women is
prohibited. She also learns the Clan Medicine from her foster
mother Iza. The clan
head's son Broud hates Ayala for her color,
height and skills, tortures her and rapes her a few times.
Eventualy she becomes pregnent and gives birth to an aborigin.
Clan couldn't understand why the baby
boy's head is not steady.
They out cast the mother and child in the forest. Ayala feeds her
son for a few months and like all the human beings the boy's head
becoms steady. She brings the child to the clan only to find that
the Clan head is dead and Broud the bad man is the new leader. He
curses her and she abandons her son forever to the clan and starts a
breath taking journey....to the next noval, The valley of Horses
Vivid
details of the clan, very interesting flow of storey line, poetic
relationships and sense of belonging of the reader is the success of
the author. Specific incidents like river side picnic of the
clan, hunting the leoperd, use of sling, law of the hearth are just a
few examples in the sea of action. A spectacular
climax of the
sports event, gorry death of a Cave bear, and the begining and the end
of cannibolism are interwined in a grand manner in the climax. No
wonder, considering the size and scope of the plot, this book was made
a motion picture later.
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