Earth’s Children Six Not Very Good: Earth Still Not Flat
Before I bought “The Land of Painted Caves”, I had a quick look at the Amazon reviews first. Why I did this, I can’t say. After slogging through the first five instalments, there was never any doubt that I was going to buy this one as well. But I’m quite pleased I did, because it’s been a while since I’ve seen that level of vitriol directed at…well, to be honest, at anything.
“I waited years for this book and I was so excited,” wailed Mette. “This book is just depressing”, said Gobecgo. Great exception was taken to an excessive use of The Mother Song (“This has 35 verses (I counted) and it was repeated in full three times with extracts scattered throughout” noted M). While there is the odd lone voice gallantly trying to redeem the book (“There is not a mediocre book in the set!!!” insisted Janesk7), the general consensus is one of deep sadness, accompanied by genuine surprise.
I’m not going to go against the flow and try to argue that “Painted Caves” is somehow a work of tragically misunderstood genius. In fact, I’ll agree with everything the reviewers have said. It is slow-moving. There is a lot – no, really, a lot – of repetition. The Mother Song is utter drivel, the central characters ceased being in any way interesting about a thousand pages ago, and there are entire sections that read more like the Rough Guide To Paleolithic France than a work of imaginative fiction. The only thing I can’t understand is why anyone was even faintly taken aback by this. “Painted Caves” is exactly what I was expecting.
It’s not really possible to explain why I think the problems with “Painted Caves” are so entirely predictable without describing the other books first, so here’s a quick tour of the preceding five books in the Earth’s Children series. The series is set in the Upper Paleolithic era. The earth is in the grip of an Ice Age, and two species of humans – Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons – are busy figuring out who will inherit the Earth. One of these five books is brilliant. Guess which one.
Here’s the thing, you see. Auel did a lot of research before writing her first book; she did survival courses, learned from experts in Aboriginal culture, and probably went camping a lot. Although some of her basic premises (for example, the idea that the Neanderthals were basically silent and communicated through signs) have since been challenged by new research, at the time they represented cutting-edge thinking about the origins of human civilisation. And that’s what really makes the first book completely compelling. Because it’s Ayla’s journey through childhood, its large amounts of exposition and description make narrative sense. Ayla takes us into an ancient, primordial world – the world we all ultimately come from – and it’s a really amazing read.
The other dynamic which makes the first book great is that, while we know the Cro-Magnons win in the end, there’s simply no way Ayla is going to survive unless she suppresses her Cro-Magnon traits and adapts to Clan society. The attributes we, as readers, admire – her resourcefulness, her intelligence, her adaptability – are frowned on by the Clan, which has strict segregation of roles by gender and is genetically incapable of learning new ideas. Even though Ayla is beautiful by our standards, to the Clan she’s “big and ugly”. While we’re rooting for her, they’re frowning at her as unwomanly and “non-Clan”. It’s a great plot device, that gives the story an enormous, nail-biting tension.
In the first book, nothing comes easily to Ayla. She is constantly battling to balance her innate difference with the need to conform. In a particularly painful episode, she is raped by a Clan man, conceiving the baby she desperately longs for. Her child (half-Clan, half-Cro-Magnon) is clearly the genetic hope of the Clan, since children like him are the only way their gene-pool will make it into the future. But since he appears “deformed”, her son comes perilously close to being condemned to death.
This episode is the book in microcosm – the battle between the old and the new, the reluctance to accept difference, and the precarious balance that finally allows Durc to survive. And when Ayla is finally thrown out of the Clan at the end of the first book (sorry to spoil, but that’s what happens), it’s a genuinely great moment. Plus, it’s a magnificent set-up for a sequel.
Which…is inevitably disappointing.
“The Valley of Horses” is, essentially, a Caveman bodice-ripper. It describes the glacially slow but inevitable coming-together of Jondalar (who is undertaking a sort of Ice-Age Grand Tour with his brother Thonalan) and Ayla. Jondalar and Thonalan walk the earth, meet people, discover stuff, have adventures, and have really quite a lot of sex.
Oh God, the Caveman Sex. If you’re of a nervous disposition, look away now.
So here’s the deal. In Book One, Jean shows us Clan society, where any man can have sex with any woman he fancies, in a process described as “relieving his needs”. Obviously, That Shit Ain’t Right. So by way of compensation, in Book Two we get a Cro-Magnon society which is its polar opposite. Specifically, we get Jondalar. Jondalar is six foot tall with blond hair, blue eyes and a big knob. The big knob part isn’t just my wistful fantasy; it’s an important plot-point. Several episodes are devoted entirely to the enormous enormity of Jondalar’s enormous knob, and how he somehow feels the sex he has is never quite as good as it might be if he could get it all the way in (I’m not making this up, I swear), and how he wonders if one day he will find a woman who can take all of him that’s on offer. All of this is described in a weird combination of Solemn Capitalisation and yucky anatomical detail. Sex scenes in books normally cheer me up immensely, but these just squitted me right out. (Note for the future: when I am King, it will be illegal to Mis-use Capital Letters To Try And Make Your Gratuitous Sex Scene Sound More Like An Important Religious Ritual And Less Like Soft Porn. And anyone describing a character’s vagina as “The warm, yielding Centre of her Womanhood” will be taken out back and shot.)
So, Jondalar and Thonalan wander the earth, spreading the seed and meeting new people. Meanwhile, Ayla is living alone, and busily turning into the world’s first Mary-Sue. She discovers how to make sparks with iron pyrites and flint, thus eliminating the need for twirly sticks when making fire. She tames the first horse, and then gets all uppity and tames the first cat (in fact, the first Cave Lion). She builds the first prey-catching pit. She cooks delicious meals. How could any man resist? And, when Jondalar arrives after his extended humping tour of Ice-Age France and Ayla rescues him from a Cave Lion (sadly, Thonalan gets eaten, but if you’re anything like me, you won’t care), he is duly smitten.
There is then a whole lot of really very tiresome stuff where Jondalar teaches Ayla to speak using words. (The Clan, being basically silent, use sign-language.) Even Auel gets bored of this in the end, and Ayla has some sort of convenient dream-based brainstorm and wakes up with a perfect command of Cro-Magnon language. Then, just to spin things out a little, there’s all this confusion about sexual signals. Even while the two central characters are busy wanking in the woods (Jondalar) and lying awake at night wondering why, oh why, he doesn’t fancy her (Ayla), we can all see the inevitable union lumbering painfully over the horizon, and when they do finally get down to business, you wonder how it could get any more irritating.
And then…they have sex for the first time. Did I mention that Jondalar has a really big knob? Well, I now have to break it to you that the reason Ayla and Jondalar are clearly, like, destined for each other is because she is able to fit all of his outsized manhood inside her Magical Cave Of Wonders.
I know. Sorry, but it’s true.
See, as long as Ayla is struggling to adapt and survive, the story is fascinating. When she’s doing really well and having fun (and especially when she’s being given Pleasures by her dream man) the story is tiresome. There’s no narrative tension or fear to overcome the essential clunkiness of the writing style. Also, since this is Ayla’s journey, every time something new is needed for the story (like a tame horse), Ayla inevitably has to be the first person to discover it; which makes her unbearably talented, clever and beautiful.
The tiresomeness continues on down the quality curve throughout “The Mammoth Hunters”, when Ayla meets the Mamutoi and reveals yet more new talents. Now she can psychically track animals, and see the future. Every man who lays eyes on her fancies her. She tames a wolf-cub, thus inventing Man’s Best Friend. There is a really dull Edward-and-Bella-and-Jacob style sub-plot where Ayla briefly gets together with Ranec (the world’s first Token Black Guy), because she doesn’t think she’s worthy of Jondalar and he doesn’t think he’s worthy of her; but then they are reunited after all, even though Ranec is clearly a better bet, because their love is So True (and, presumably, because Jondalar’s knob is just that big). If your taste in erotic writing runs to a lot of Unnecessary Capitals, pulsing pink flowers scented with salt and honey, and pillars of throbbing maleness, well, you’re going to enjoy this book very much indeed. I’ll be the first to admit that’s a pretty big If.
“The Mammoth Hunters” ends with the happy couple setting off for Jondalar’s home. In “The Plains of Passage”, they meet a lot of other people who aren’t as nice as the Mamutoi, but are, generally speaking, in awe of Ayla and her tame horses and her tame wolf and her healing skills and her language skills and her beauty and her capacious vagina. (Okay, I made the last bit up.) They go along and they go along and they go along, Henny-Penny style, until they finally arrive at Jondalar’s place.
Guess where Jondalar’s family live. Go on. Where do they live? Where’s the only possible place the worthy mate of Proto-Mary-Sue? They live in the Caves at Lascaux. Seriously. Ayla’s man is a high-ranking member of the world’s most famous and gifted Cavemen ever. Holy-Paleolithic-Sparklemotion-Awesomesauce!!!
We’ve now reached the absolute bottom of the quality curve; if you can deal with this, I promise it won’t get any worse. Ayla’s Mary-Sueness is now in full flower. This entire seven-hundred-page book is about how all the girls are jealous and all the men are horny and all the elders are suspicious and the High Priestess wants to train her as her successor and Ayla gets a minor amount of teenage-style grief off Jondalar’s ex-girlfriend but she wins them all over by her unquestioning goodness and talent and beauty and really, you’ll probably want to kill her, but it’s still kind of fun, in a strange and dreadful way. It was during this book that I invented Auel Bingo, where you count off how many of the following events occur in any given chapter. 1) Someone meets, and is surprised by, Ayla’s tame wolf. 2) Someone meets, and is surprised by, Ayla’s tame horses. 3) Someone notices Ayla has a foreign accent. 4) Someone notices Ayla is really hot, and wants to get her deerskins off. 5) Ayla does something awesome, then explains that she got to be so awesome from living with the Clan. 6) At least one character is referred to by an incredibly clunky and burdensome name, e.g. The One Who Was First Among Those Who Served The Great Earth Mother. 7) Ayla and Jondalar Have Sex and it makes your toes curl in a bad way. If you tick off all seven, you’re allowed to yell “House!” and run down the road to buy chocolate. The book ends with Ayla’s Matrimonial, where she is pregnant (naturally), and all the men are still lusting after her and Jondalar’s ex is still jealous.
As Ayla and Jondalar wander off into the chilly ice-age sunset, it’s all over. There can be no more. The reason why most stories stop at the wedding is because after that, they either live happily ever after, which is boring, or they don’t live happily ever after, which upsets the fans.
And then, for no good reason that I can account for, since after five best-sellers she must, must have made enough money to not need to do it, Jean Auel wrote another.
So, firstly, “Painted Caves” is largely boring. But of course it is! Ayla is juggling a baby, a home, a husband and a job (she’s training to be a Priestess). How is it fair to expect her and Jondalar to go off and have adventures on top of everything else? Secondly, there is a lot of wandering around caves, looking at paintings. Well, duh. If there’s one thing the first five books taught us, it’s that Jean Auel is not one to hold back on sharing the fruits of her research. If she’s been lucky enough to get an insider’s tour of the Lascaux caves, you’d better believe we’re all going to be reading a whole lot about what they look like.
Thirdly, a lot of reviewers seem to have taken exception to the end-of-book drama moment, where both Jondalar and Ayla have affairs. Once again I say to you; duh. Sometimes, this is what happens. Life is hard. People are weak. Marriage takes work. Sometimes we slip. And let’s face it, there’s plenty of evidence from the first four books that Jondalar and Ayla really, really suck at communicating with each other.
The other major theme of the review firestorm is the book’s repetitiveness, and I will admit that if you want to play Auel Bingo, this is definitely the best book to play it with. The basic narrative unit goes like this. Ayla and her crew rock up to some new location; there are many, many ponderous introductions; everyone is struck with Ayla’s foreignness / hotness / animal-controllingness / other miscellaneous awesomeness; Ayla tells her origin story; lather; rinse; repeat. If you turned Auel Bingo into a drinking game, you could probably be calling people up to tell them you loved them and staggering into doorframes within the first six chapters.
But, again – this was all entirely predictable from the previous book. The only difference between “Shelters of Stone” and “Painted Caves” is that, since Ayla has now been accepted by Jondalar’s family and they have got married, there’s even less going on than there was last time. Again, people, what did you think was going to happen? And yes yes yes, I know you all had much better ideas for sequels (Ayla’s half-Clan son Durc shows up; Ayla meets someone from her original tribe; there is some sort of Clan / Zelandonii war), but that’s clearly not how Jean Auel wants to play it. Since the very first book, we’ve all known what Ayla wants; she wants to be a Medicine woman, have her own home, get married and have babies. The entire narrative drive of the intervening four-thousand-and-odd pages has been leading her towards this destination. Why act all hurt and upset because she finally got there?
So, yeah; that’s “The Land of Painted Caves”; a lot of tiresome domestic detail, a dollop of marital unhappiness, and a lot of stuff about cave-paintings that would have been much better if they’d just bitten the bullet and put in a Photograph section in the middle. It’s not good. In fact, it’s really, really bad, and I’m not trying to defend it. It’s just not actually any worse than the last one.
You may now ask the really obvious question. Dear Cassandra. If you knew this book would be crap, and did not think much of the previous ones either (the brilliant opening book excepted), whatever possessed you to spend more than ten of your fine English pounds downloading the thing onto your Kindle? The only answer I have is, Why do people run marathons? All that pain and misery for the debatable pleasure of saying, “I did it”. I didn’t especially enjoy “Painted Caves”, but by God, at least I finished it. I’m expecting to receive my medal in the post.
If you’re only going to read one book by Jean Auel, then it should unquestionably be “The Clan of the Cave Bear“. If you only read two, then the second one should be “The Valley of Horses“. But if you, like me, get suckered in and feel compelled to finish this marathon, then “The Land of Painted Caves” is available from Amazon for £10.99 for the Kindle edition or £10.79 for the book. My advice is to save a tree and go for the Kindle edition. The planet will thank you in the long run.
Funnily enough, I have just this week finished book 5, and have been put off reading the last book by the reviews, which is almost unheard of for me. I’ll read pretty much anything. I listened to the first 3 on Audible, so I did miss out on the Capitalized Great Sex. I feel deprived. Will i really regret not finishing the series, do you think?
That’s an interesting question…I suppose it depends on whether you’re of the must-finish-at-all-costs school of thought, or the life’s-too-short-to-read-rubbish school. I have a ludicrous compulsion to finish things No Matter What, so I don’t think I could have lived with myself if I hadn’t. But for anyone who doesn’t share my affliction, I’d recommend avoidance.
That’s not much help at all really, is it? 🙂
Your review cracked-me-up. Thanks for your great observations. I was feeling the affects of redundancy in Auel’s writing, but determined to finish the book. Searching for reviews, it was highly entertaining to read your suggestion for Auel BINGO. {If you tick off all seven, you’re allowed to yell “House!”} LOL! Thanks.
I think I’ll wait until it’s cheaper, and then consider it, if I haven’t forgotten about it by then. I can get it free on audio, but then I won’t be able to skim the first part. I have downloaded the Atheist’s Daughter, however, which seems more promising.
[…] over. I’m also sort of thinking “Dune”, and “Star Wars”, and “Clan of the Cave Bear“, and wondering if the next two books can possibly live up to the first […]
[…] earthy vocabulary I’ve written before about the distressing tendency of Fantasy authors to write about sex using far too many euphemisms and capital letters – as if our ancestors spent all their time thinking up beautiful flowery phrases for one […]
Land of Painted Caves. I just ordered this book on Amazon. Seriously, just 10 minutes ago. I had a feeling the book would be just as you discribed. Shelters of Stone is the first book I ever skimmed through towards the end as I could tell what was coming, plus all the repetition of the family lineage made it move faster to skim through. I guess I am a glutton for punishment. Wish me luck. .
Best of luck! And enjoy the many, many iterations of Mother Song. It’s all kinds of special. 🙂
Thank you for your review Cassandra (which I know is nearly three years old) but it made me laugh a lot. I bought the sixth instalment of Auel’s dreary books about ten days ago and had been sluggishly trawling through the detritus hoping against hope to net some good fish. But after 100 pages I really needed a reality check… I kept hauling up garbage. After reading several other reviews which uniformly bagged it, which all made me choke laughing at my stupidity, imagining that there could be some actual imagination and creativity and quality left in this saga of sagas, I finally got to yours. I have now put the mostly unread book on the pile for the op shop. Thank you for saving me from a fate worse than death.
How do editors let such crap get through their guard?
If you’re on a serious budget, there’s always the public library.
It wasn’t the money, although that was certainly wasted dornbeast. Just a dumb, dumb, dumb book that is so appallingly bad. The author must be using the takings to buy herself a nice dorm room in the local dementia unit. Let’s hope it’s padlocked.
Nearly wet myself laughing at this review, I got so bored with Ayla’s pefection that by the end of “The Mammoth Hunters” i wanted to kill her as well (my friend has decided that Ayla is so perfect she even invented the first ice lolly, by leaving a cup of herbal tea outside with a stick in it, on a freezing cold night),
I read the “Shelters of Stone” but by then I had totally HAD IT, and really can’t be arsed with “..Painted Caves”. My life is too short.
“Clan of the Cave Bear” is such an excellent book, and we all hoped that Durc would show up again one day, he would be Mog Ur or something, but I knew the final book would be drivel. I expect the only time I will read it is if I end up doing life in gaol or something.
Very funny review. The bit about Jondalar’s HUGE KNOB had me howling with laughter….
I loved “Clan..” and the two books which followed it, but then, but then I found the long boring passages about Mammoths shagging and the uses of Cattail and YES..Ayla’s tea making abilities to be totally tiresome. Ayla is too darn perfect, and although I LOVED the soft porn when reading it aged 14 (who wouldn’t?) I later found it to be clunky, awkward, and quite frankly, I can write better. So I have;
“Ayla’s blue eyes glittered like the Dog star on a freezing evening as she pressed herself closer to her mate and buried her face in the golden curls of his chest, the hair misted with a light dew of his aroma, hinting at his essence to come. She felt safe in his six foot six embrace, inhaling his scent as he dug his large hands into the mane of luxurious hair framing her pale face. She felt the sudden irritation of her tight trousers, pleasurable in a strange kind of way as her own need slaked her taut thighs. She could feel the cave rock hard need in him, urgent, insisting, between them like a wild animal. She groaned, and in return heard the shortness of his breath and the catch in his lowered husky voice as he whispered,
“Ayla, MY Ayla, I want to share pleasures with you…….”
Ayla rolled her eyes
“Oh for Spirits’ sake Jondalar, just Shut up and F*** me will you? “
That’s wonderful!
Gli eredi di Marte (2010) A Jean M. Auel
Oggi voglio essere proprio prosaico: ne narrerò una per suscitar sonno. Molto dopo che asteroide in collisione col nostro pianeta frantumasse tutto un continente di terre emerse chiamato Gondwana e abitato da dinosauri, grandi rettili i cui ossi vennero poi scambiati per quelli di giganti, Marte andava desertificandosi. La sua catastrofe ecologica era tale che Iddio volle salvarne uno di quella specie: Uwa, bimbetta il cui nome è l’onomatopea del vagito. A bordo di un cesto dal guscio duro, capsula di salvataggio, la vergine madre sfidò l’algido spazio stellare da sola e soletta, poiché Hinun-ndendée, il grande uccello, era andato in avaria. Catturata dalle correnti gravitazionali terrestri, essa cadde in un lago chiamato Tanganica, nei pressi di due montagne d’Africa: l’una bianca, il Kilimangiaro, l’altra nera per i guerrieri Masai. Trovata da Dorso Grigio nella nebbia, in principio Uwa fu allevata secondo gli usi e i costumi di australopiteco, essere scimmiesco – goffo, in verità – che non utilizzava ciottoli come fossero utensìli, che non conosceva ancora le nostre fatiche, né il significato della parola morte, avendo questo coscienza limitata di sé. A quei tempi la vegetazione era più lussureggiante di adesso; unica insidia era Fungua, la puzzolente gorgone dai denti a sciabola, fiera che sbucava all’improvviso dal folto, colpiva e nei recessi dell’oscurità tornava. Un giorno il vecchio banano Naamasa, che sembrava tanto secco, rifiorì e Uwa, che era nell’età del primo menarca, ebbe una visione mistica: “Io sono l’uno che diventa il due, che diventa il quattro, che diventa l’otto e che torna a essere l’uno”, le disse un nibbio appollaiato tra i rami di un sicomoro. Era il tramonto, ma fu già l’inizio di un’altra era. D’istinto, colei che avrebbe di lì a poco generato un maschietto senza conoscere uomo, di sette in sette cominciò a contare le noci di cui era ghiotta e a dar un nome a ogni dito di mani e piedi, ivi compreso lo strano concetto dello zero, rappresentato dal pugno della vuota mano. Cammina cammina, al campo tutte le notarono il ventre e le mammelle gonfi. Il nuovo capobranco ne rimase sconcertato: che un abile, impertinente dei suoi figli l’avesse posseduta, ma come mai essa emanava il suo stesso odore di maschio dominante? Che fosse stato, allora, lui a ingravidarla col suo sguardo! Era da un po’ che la puntava, schiacciando le noci… La prese sotto le sue ali protettive, trotterellando via. Ed essa partorì Tep-ii-tesher-am-akh, colui che è il Capo-che esce-rosso-dalla-immagine, un marziano che non seppe mai di essere tale. Regina madre come un’ape, Uwa lo generò e nei suoi mitocondri vi era la formula dell’immortalità. Inoltre possedeva un gran numero di ribosomi a livello cellulare e il tocco delle sue mani era considerato terapeutico, a causa del fluido sottile, energetico, che esse sprigionavano. Come l’uro di raffigurazioni preistoriche parietali successive, questo ercolino, eretto Adamo possedeva una costola mobile in più delle figlie di Eva e non fu lui ad accoppiarsi coi Neanderthal di Lilith, ovvero colei che rapiva nel sonno i bambini cattivi per sintetizzarne, da adulti, i caratteri del Sapiens. Per un’aberrazione cromatica il suo occhio percepiva solo i colori primari. E il rosso sangue gli faceva fare dei brutti sogni in un campo totalmente grigio. Ma il suo spirito si elevò subito al cielo blu e al sole giallo oro d’una gloria, i suoi discendenti furono attratti subito dal fuoco, si dipingevano di ocra il corpo nudo. E venne il tempo di abbandonare la foresta pluviale e di cacciare nella savana, regno di predatori e di carogne in cui egli seguiva il bufalo dalla coda bianca, ricca fonte di sostentamento, nei loro spostamenti. Una notte, poi, al chiaro di luna, egli sentì un insolito richiamo: sì, un dolce profumo, e, appartatosi, si unì con Ndok, il cui nome significa Acqua Viva. Per uno strano caso del destino gli generò figli, dei figli sani e forti, come Okin, l’Airone; come Mongo, il signore del Popolo delle Teste Rotonde; come Zamani, il capo del clan di Erin. Ed Erin un mastodonte dalle zanne diritte, non così ricurve come quelle del mammùt. E Zamani diede nome di Grande Orecchio di Erin al Bacino del Congo, perché i suoi fiumi ne assumevano la forma tracciatili sulla sabbia. Egli viaggiò molto in cerca di avventura e di se stesso. I figli di Zamani: Dùrù, colui che vide l’ippopotamo nel Lago Ciad, che allora si estendeva fino al Sahara; Kil, il piccolo grande cacciatore di rinoceronti; But, colui che dormiva su una larga pietra piatta; Ze, quello che portava sempre con sé un dente di leopardo; Abo, lo zoppo che scovò bertucce alle cosiddette Colonne d’Ercole. Le figlie di costui: Bololanege, colei che spinse i suoi anelli alle caviglie fino in Spagna; Anyeghe, l’amore di tutti gli uomini sotto i palmizi. Costei ebbe molti figli, tra cui Afan, che in Enotria ebbe due gemelle che migrarono nei Balcani: Kowa e Mukashi. E altri furono i suoi discendenti di cui si è persa memoria e spintisi oltre l’Ucraina. Giunto il clan in Cina, Riitho, detto l’ Avvoltoio, si unì con Kini, con colei che seppe pretendere, farsi rispettare, che uccise Mama Baru, una grossa iena, in una località chiamata, nel linguaggio dei gesti, Tie-saba, perché le ci vollero ben tre giorni per farlo, e lo fece da sola. Alla fiamma del fuoco en-Kima essa era solita indurire lo strano corno del naso di Mbawala, un’antilope, e con esso arrostiva le dolcigne carni di animali che si catturavano col boomerang presso alture di un gruppo di gigantotechi, ovvero degli yeti. E accaddero degli straordinari terremoti e paurosi smottamenti: l’India, che fino ad allora si chiamava l’Isola di Mounji, ovvero la Madre Terra Mu, si unì al continente asiatico, ne innalzò la cresta montuosa fino all’Europa di Sikar, il re delle conchiglie. E lungo la cosiddetta Via della Seta essi incisero sulle rocce degli strani omini stilizzati chiamati Mwana, e in un luogo oggi desertico esiste ancora un tipo di scrittura simile: ad esempio, quello che per voi potrà apparire quasi l’enigma della sfinge. Quattro disegni elementari in sequenza: 1) una capanna rotonda o caverna, al cui interno sta un omino filiforme in piedi; 2) una seconda figura con una casetta di rami al cui interno quell’omino ci sta sdraiato, come se dormisse; 3) una terza in cui l’omino stilizzato ne sta a testa in giù; 4) un’ultima in cui ne cammina al di fuori, tutto contento per la stagione. E il significato di tutto ciò è il seguente: giunta l’ora del parto, con cautela nelle mani, ci si dovrebbe assicurare che la testa del cucciolo della gestante sia in corretta posizione d’uscita, altrimenti potrebbe soffocarsi col cordone ombelicale e tanto da sembrar come provenuto da… l’Aldilà! Questa, la filosofia di tutta una vita, di un’arte di metterci al mondo. E tra le figlie di Uwa vi furono anche altre vergini madre che misero alla luce uomini famosi. Ed esse contavano il numero di essi coi nodi delle treccine dei capelli ondulati, poiché fu di Atak, colei che indicò la Grande Strada, la profezia che il decimillesimo di essi sarebbe diventato messia, un Gran Khan che avrebbe dominato con vera giustizia e sconfitto per sempre i cannibali dal biforcuto piede di struzzo, la cui regina si chiamava Saba. E alcune vergini di esse erano solite riunirsi per festeggiar solstizi presso un campo di grano selvatico, tutto di misteriosi segni geometrici: per uno strano fenomeno elettromagnetico, cadendovi fulmine, si era generato vortice di particelle di silicio che ne aveva piegato, e talora intrecciato, le pianticelle spontanee. E dall’adusto punto d’impatto della saetta col terreno non coltivato sfera incandescente si era librata: come un aquilone o un disco volante, essa sfrecciò via col vento, risucchiata dall’alto. Esse ne ritenevano sacro il suolo e che il Cielo avesse voluto comunicar loro i Suoi disegni, disegni tanto affascinanti quanto quelli di Nazca, in Perù, dove il famoso ragno simboleggia Orione. Nel tempo fiumi cambiarono corso, monti si livellarono; un dì un gran cuoricino: “O spiriti eletti, ascoltate: non si muore che una volta sola, ma nello spirito quante di volte! Più non lucidiamo, fratelli, una pietra che sia simbolo tagliente di perfezione, bensì costruiamo, pietra dopo pietra, fatica dopo fatica interiore, un regno di belle speranze per l’umanità”. Il Dieg-mil aveva parlato ed essi vissero in armonia d’intenti lungo le coste del grande mare interno che, Oh! molto prima di Genghiz Khan, andava dal Mar Nero di un’Atlantide al Mar Caspio e da quest’ultimo al Lago Aral.
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That’s one of the funniest (and spot-on) reviews I’ve ever read. Honestly, I laughed so hard I began to choke and there was no Ayla there to save me with her recently discovered Heimlich maneuver. Great job.
Thanks for this review. Your eloquently written post has summed up my experience of reading this series and given me the information I need to stop torturing myself with the final book. I’ve made it about two thirds of the way through – skim-reading most of the way – but I can now put this book aside and move onto something worth my time. Thank you. Jx
This review was LOL spot-on. I was feeling the affects of redundancy in Auel’s writing, but determined to finish the book. Searching for perspective, it was great to find your review. I got validation for my frustration and loved reading your suggestion for Auel BINGO. ‘Can you hear her foreign accent?’ Thanks for the laughs