The Clan are the Neanderthals, while the Others are Cro-Magnons, anatomically modern Homo sapiens sapiens. This book is actually set 30,000 years ago in prehistoric Europe. Through the eyes of Ayla and members of Brun's clan, Jean Auel tells a story about family, acceptance, loyalty, honour, tradition, and yes, race. And she earns the ire of the future leader of the clan, the impetuous Broud. She fails to conform to the Clan standards for women, preferring instead to hunt and assert herself in ways permitted only to men. For the most part this brings his clan great luck, but Ayla has a lot of trouble fitting in. Brun reluctantly allows his medicine woman to care for the child, whose name is Ayla. She is a member of the Others, a strange species that looks humanoid but is not Clan. They stumble across an injured five-year-old child-but she is not Clan. One such clan, led by the fair-minded Brun, is searching for a new cave after theirs was destroyed in an earthquake. There are many clans within the Clan, each of which live in their own caves, have their own leaders and medicine women and mog-urs (shamans). In a world of long, harsh winters and short summers, the Clan of the Cave Bear is a humanoid civilization that worships Ursus for bringing them culture and traditions. I apologize for the somewhat lengthy and uncharacteristic paragraph of plot summary that follows.
No, the temptation was purely an urge to remove the book from my vicinity as quickly as possible. But I wouldn't turn this book into a projectile out of mere spite or desire to cause headaches. That's often the feeling I experienced while reading The Clan of the Cave Bear.
I have no doubt that if it were to hit someone in the head, it could seriously annoy that person and even cause a headache. It's a hefty little paperback, and my copy is old enough that it the pages no longer lie quite next to each other on the spine, so it looks even bigger than it is. Sometimes I wanted to throw this book out the window.