 | |
| Author | Megan Lindholm |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Richard Bober |
| Genre | Fantasy |
| Publisher | Bantam Spectra |
Publication date | 1991 |
| Publication place | United States |
| ISBN | 0-553-29327-3 |
Cloven Hooves is a 1991 fantasy novel by Megan Lindholm, published in the US by Bantam Spectra. UK and French editions have also been released. [1] [2] The book went out of print in the US, where it was unavailable for nearly thirty years before a Voyager Classics edition was issued in 2019. [3]
The story follows a woman named Evelyn as her imaginary childhood companion, a faun called Pan, makes a real-world appearance in the midst of a crisis in her adult life.
Critic Don D'Ammassa considered it the best work written under the author's Lindholm byline. [4] In 1992 author Orson Scott Card, writing in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction , described the story as passionately written and having a quality of "mythic resonance", while finding its structure awkward. He concluded: "you must experience it, if only to feel again the hard, driving pulse of raw storytelling that is so commonly drained out of more traditional, predictable tales". [5] In a review of the French edition, Le Monde described it as "a singular and moving novel that is a magnificent ode to Mother Nature", [2] and as a "major work" of the author. [6] A 1996 reference work was less positive and found the book "at times, quite tedious". [1]
Several reviewers felt that Cloven Hooves was semi-autobiographical, seeing resemblances between Evelyn's childhood in the Alaskan wilderness and the author's own life. [6] [7] [8] Lindholm said she had been frequently asked about this and replied, "No more so than any of my books". [9]
... un roman singulier et émouvant qui est une ode magnifique à Mère Nature.
...oeuvre majeure.