Primordial passions

The Land of Painted Caves
by Jean M. Auel
Hodder and Stoughton, HK$260

There's always a special thrill surrounding the final episode of any long-running series. When J.K. Rowling released Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, for instance, the world practically ground to a halt with excitement. But was excitement the only sensation present?

These finales often prove to be complicated emotional affairs. In Potter's case, joy mingled with relief (it's here at last), excitement with anxiety (who's going to die?). But it was also possible to detect boredom (enough already, J.K.) as well as a poignant disappointment not dissimilar to mourning. Still, sometimes poignant disappointment is all that is felt - something the audiences who trudged out of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace will remember all too clearly.

Which brings us to The Land of Painted Caves, the sixth and final instalment of Jean M. Auel's Earth's Children series. Thirty years in the making, and with sales exceeding 45 million, this epic portrait of life in prehistoric times deserves its place alongside Potter, Skywalker et al: it's even big enough to warrant a registered trademark.

Like so many of her blockbusting peers, Auel makes an unlikely best-seller. Her big idea - to follow the life, trials and romances of Ayla, a young girl born 18,000 years ago - does not sound like the stuff sales are made of. But then again, nor does the life, trials and romances of a teen wizard called Harry.

Nevertheless, beginning with Clan of the Cave Bear in 1980, Auel spun literary gold out of several individual threads: exhaustive research into Cro-Magnon history; plenty of adventure, danger and wild animals; a vividly rendered natural world; a heroine, Ayla, who's admirable to the point of saintliness. And plenty of rumpy pumpy. This last strand is arguably Auel's big selling point. Like her ghoulish mega-selling descendant, Stephenie Meyer, Auel is a romance novelist, only in an anthropologist's rather than vampire's clothing.