"A whole culture is imaginatively and authoritatively illuminated" in this "suspenseful, insightful, poignant" novel of prehistoric times (Publishers Weekly).
Twenty thousand years ago, a courageous girl lived in Siberia near Woman Lake, a place you won't find on any modern map. Only thirteen, Yanan and her companionsâ??hunters of deer, gatherers of roots and twigsâ??struggle to survive the harsh realities of hunger and cold, bound by an unending cycle of birth, kinship, violence, and death.
As Yanan recounts the terrible adventures of her brief life, she departs on spirit journeys that evoke the lives of the animals to which she and her people are intimately linked. A lyrical novel of our species' prehistory, Reindeer Moon opens up corridors to the imagination that lead us back to the long-forgotten echoes of our distant human past.
"Unforgettable . . . Reindeer Moon beautifully resurrects a lost world of merciless magnificence. Dozens of memorable characters live and die in this moving tale, which should become a classic." â??Chicago Tribune Book World
"Those familiar with the author's landmark study, The Harmless People, will not be surprised at the range of anthropological information she brings to her first novel, or at the lucidity of her prose. What will astonish, engross and move readers in her narrative of a group of hunter-gatherers who lived 20,000 years ago is the dramatic immediacy of the story and the depth and range of character development." â??Publishers Wee… (más)
Like the premise of this book - a prehistoric woman becomes the helper and guardian of her tribe when her spirit is captured after she dies. I enjoyed the story. ( )
interesting book if you like seeing how people lived back in the days of the mammoths. loved learning how they married into different tribes because of what they offered each other. ( )
Das ist wirklich ein phantastisches Buch über eine junge Frau in der Steinzeit, in Sibirien vor etwa 20.000 Jahren. Anders, als man es mitunter kennt, stellt Frau Thomas keine moderne Frau in Steinzeitverkleidung dar, sondern verdeutlicht das Leben der damaligen Zeit. Die Autorin hat als Ethnologin einen mehrjährigen Aufenthalt bei einem Jäger-Sammler-Volk in der Kalahari verbracht und hat auch ansonsten ausgesprochen gut für ihren Roman recherchiert. Wirklich ein tolles Werk! ( )
The story of an ordinary (if rather strong and feisty) young woman living sometime during the last ice age, as related by her after she has died and become a guardian spirit. Despite the supernatural element, which works surprisingly well, the story is mostly concerned with very ordinary things: births, deaths, the little scandals and quarrels of small groups of people living in close quarters, and the never-ending search for food. But it's consistently interesting and very readable, partly because it's just plain fascinating to try to imagine what kind of lives our ancestors might have led twenty thousand years ago, and partly because the characters feel so believable and so recognizably human.
The cover blurb declares that it's "for everyone who loved The Clan of the Cave Bear!" It's been a long, long time since I read that one, but I'm willing to venture the opinion that this book is the better of the two. It's certainly better than The Valley of Horses, which is the point where I gave up on Auel. ( )
The story is set twenty thousand years ago in a cold northern region of forest and steppes. Like Clan of the Cave Bear, it's full of harsh realities and bitter struggles for survival. The main character is a young woman named Yanan, who after a streak of catastrophic events finds herself alone with her younger sister, traveling through the wilderness to try and find her people again. They take shelter in an old abandoned lodge, only to find a mother wolf has made it her den. For a time they co-exist with the wolf and its cub. In this incident and the following events, I could see a scenario arising of how the first wolf was tamed. Also very interesting were parts of the story where when a person died, their spirit would take on the form of an animal. It showed how a lot of different animals lived: deer, lion, bear, owl etc. Mostly the story is about a woman growing up, learning some hard lessons in a very harsh land, about nature and nurture, about discovery and loss...her efforts to live her life the way she wants to- sometimes against the tenants of her society. Not nearly as dramatic (or rich in detail) as Clan of the Cave Bear, but full of grim realities- death in childbirth is common, many children never survive to adulthood, winter brings starvation, people fight over food and mates, illness and injury go ignored. Often the people acted totally callous towards each other. And yet they were also skillful, manipulative and imaginative- very human.
Zelfs al zouden alle haviken ter wereld verdwijnen, dan nog zou hunbeeld sluimeren in de ziel van de kip. ~JOSEPH CAMPBELL The Way of the Animal Powers
Even if all the hawks in the world were to vanish, their image would still sleep in the soul of the chick. ~ Joseph Campbell The Way of the Animals
"Master, you know that I sit waiting for the moon to turn back for me, that I may return to my place. That I may listen again to my people's stories, which come from a long way off ... " ~Peter Sacks In These Mountains
"A whole culture is imaginatively and authoritatively illuminated" in this "suspenseful, insightful, poignant" novel of prehistoric times (Publishers Weekly).
Twenty thousand years ago, a courageous girl lived in Siberia near Woman Lake, a place you won't find on any modern map. Only thirteen, Yanan and her companionsâ??hunters of deer, gatherers of roots and twigsâ??struggle to survive the harsh realities of hunger and cold, bound by an unending cycle of birth, kinship, violence, and death.
As Yanan recounts the terrible adventures of her brief life, she departs on spirit journeys that evoke the lives of the animals to which she and her people are intimately linked. A lyrical novel of our species' prehistory, Reindeer Moon opens up corridors to the imagination that lead us back to the long-forgotten echoes of our distant human past.
"Unforgettable . . . Reindeer Moon beautifully resurrects a lost world of merciless magnificence. Dozens of memorable characters live and die in this moving tale, which should become a classic." â??Chicago Tribune Book World
"Those familiar with the author's landmark study, The Harmless People, will not be surprised at the range of anthropological information she brings to her first novel, or at the lucidity of her prose. What will astonish, engross and move readers in her narrative of a group of hunter-gatherers who lived 20,000 years ago is the dramatic immediacy of the story and the depth and range of character development." â??Publishers Wee
)
)
Google Books — Cargando...
6