SYNOPSIS

Palaeolithic. Ayla, a five-year-old girl who lost her family in a violent earthquake, wanders alone in an unknown land populated by huge and ferocious animals, such as the cave lion that injures her leg while she desperately searches for food and shelter. The cave bear clan, looking for a new place to settle, meets her almost dead on their path. Brun, the leader, doesn’t want to accept her, but Iza, her sister and healer, decides to cure her and, with Creb, her brother, takes care of her as if she were her own daughter. Ayla heals and learns the new habits of the clan to be accepted by them, but her appearance and behaviour are different from them and Brud, the leader’s son, who develops an irrational hatred towards her, makes her life impossible.

REVIEW

I liked one aspect of this novel and another one I didn’t. The first is the reconstruction of a story set in the Palaeolithic, based on in-depth research on how people used to live in prehistory, which makes the protagonist’s adventures quite credible, how she lives her life in her new family and how she faces difficult situations. The second aspect instead concerns a theme that occupies a large part of the book and that I didn’t like reading very much: the submission of women to the will of men. Despite this, I got to the end of the book to find out if the little protagonist had a happy ending.
The author narrates the story in the third person accessing the characters’ thoughts, and it’s a great decision considering they used to communicate with gestures and not with verbal language. Despite this, there are dialogues adapted to the context that make the reading fluid and interesting. As for the descriptions, they are very detailed and allow you to identify places and people at any moment of the story. The central theme develops around secondary themes that, in some cases, are treated more broadly with respect to the main one, and the good choice of the time structure makes the rhythm of the narration flow without slowing down.