Jean Auel & Clan of the Cave Bear Series

I have loved these books since I discovered them in college and wondered if there were many other people here that loved them as well.

I thought that if there were, we might like to have a little discussion group about the books.

 

Ice-age pornography. The first one was readable. The second was unbearable. Every other word was "pleasure". "Please allow it to be my pleasure to pleasure you with my pleasure!" Downhill from there.

I guess if you love the more annoying elements of Anne Rice's books you'll probably like these.

 

Sorry, but I hate them too. Had to read the first one in high school. Positively dreadful and smacked of racism. The beautiful, blonde, white, woman outsmarting the ugly, dark, cave people.

 

"Please allow it to be my pleasure to pleasure you with my pleasure!"

You are sooo right.

 

I actually really enjoy the series. It's not racist as such as far as i can tell, maybe Auels idea of Neanderthal man is a little dated and based on racist ideas but if you had read the entire series you'd know that Auel brings a non-white character into the story during The Mammoth Hunters and he ends up taking Ayla's fancy for a while.

For more pleasures of course.

I only have one problem with it, the thing that bugs me is the overt feminism Auel brings to the story. How Ayla is portrayed as the woman that invented everything. Honestly, according to Auel, one gorgeous blonde woman invented everything from slings to starting fire with flint to domesticating animals etc etc etc all in a 10 year period. It's stuff that would have taken humanity hundreds if not thousands of years to come up with. How she portrays human females in neolithic times as hunters, and society as very egalitarian in it's division of labour. It's a hard concept to sell when modern hunter/gatherer societies have fairly strict divisions of labour between what women do and what men do.

Other than that I think the story is great, the detail is brilliant and the world created by Auel is gorgeous.

I have yet to read the latest installment, The Shelters of Stone. Think I'll go get it now that you've mentioned it.

 

Ice-age pornography.

...masquerading as historical fiction.

Auel does seem to have done considerable research into Ice Age lifestyle as far as how they lived and hunted and what tools/materials they used, but all of that is wrapped around a complete waste of a storyline.


I've read up through Plains of Passage and while the secondary characters are interesting, the mains just become annoying the more you read about them.

 

Ice-age pornography. The first one was readable. The second was unbearable

1)

2) I bought Valley of the Horses In a second hand store the other day, It seemed intresting, something to read at least. But now I am glad that I only paid 10 cents for it