The Clan of the Cave Bear
Jean M. Auel, 1980
Historical fiction FantasyContemporary fictionLiterary fiction
An earthquake orphans a five-year-old girl, and a band of Neanderthals takes her in — a story of survival, difference and belonging.
Feels like awe, dread and hope. About nature, identity and society.
A page from the book
To be five years old and understand that nobody is coming.
The child was alone in a wilderness of grassy steppes and scattered forests. Glaciers spanned the continent on the north, pushing their cold before them. Untold numbers of grazing animals, and the carnivores that preyed on them, roamed the vast prairies, but people were few. She had nowhere to go and she had no one who would come and look for her. She was alone. Jean M. Auel.Auel did years of Ice Age research, including survival-skills courses, before publishing this, her first novel, at forty-four, with five children.
Books that feel like this
More by Jean M. Auel
The Plains of Passage
Jean M. Auel, 1990
Ayla and Jondalar travel across Ice Age Europe with two horses and a wolf, meeting peoples who see their animal companions as spirits or prey.
The Shelters of Stone
Jean M. Auel, 2002
A woman raised by Neanderthals arrives at her lover’s Ice Age people with two tame horses and a wolf, and must be accepted on sight.
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Questions readers ask
- What is The Clan of the Cave Bear like?
- Feels like awe, dread and hope. About nature, identity and society.
- What should I read after The Clan of the Cave Bear?
- If you liked The Clan of the Cave Bear, try Island of the Blue Dolphins (Scott O'Dell), The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway) and Annihilation (Jeff Vandermeer).
A taste of the feed
What it costs to be the only one not counting the dead as profit.
Many of our tribe went to the cliff each night to count the number killed during the day. They counted the dead otter and thought of the beads and other things that each pelt meant. But I never went to the cove and whenever I saw the hunters with their long spears skimming over the water, I was angry, for these animals were my friends.
Island of the Blue Dolphins · Scott O'Dell
What it means when a ruined place starts to look beautiful.
The effect of this cannot be understood without being there. The beauty of it cannot be understood, either, and when you see beauty in desolation it changes something inside you. Desolation tries to colonize you.
Annihilation · Jeff Vandermeer
What if death is not life's enemy but its jealous lover?
The reason death sticks so closely to life isn’t biological necessity — it’s envy. Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud.
Life of Pi · Yann Martel
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