Reindeer Moon by Elizabeth Marshall ThomasMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Elizabeth Marshall Thomas doesn’t write books. She writes our history, infused with dreams.
My first foray into the writings of Elizabeth Marshall Thomas was the book “The Old Ways”, and it’s a book that continually haunts my thoughts and even my conversations with others, and became more than just research for my own prehistoric trilogy. Her deep insight into the Ju/wassi tribes of Africa is a testament to her brilliant way with words, as well as her ability to make the layperson understand a culture not their own.
In “Reindeer Moon”, though, the story is much more personal and accessible. Through Yanan’s young eyes, we learn the ways of Siberian hunter-gatherers in the Paleolithic era, but Yanan could be any girl, caught between her culture and her own wishes, often to the detriment of those around her.
What is so refreshing about Ms. Thomas’ writing is that she never bows to conventionality or any restriction of how a story “should” unfold. So many times at various conflict points in the novel, I would think that somehow, Yanan must overcome her pride and learn from her mistakes (though it may be doubtful whether they are mistakes or not – she is at least always authentic) and will escape the fate that we learn of in the prologue, when Yanan tells the reader that “I was still a young woman when I left the world of the living and became a spirit of the dead.”
Though we might have read other novels narrated by ghosts, I’ve never read any other stories like Yanan’s, in which she becomes not just one other animal in her spirit journeys, but many, sometimes finding it hard to return to the world of the human spirits. But we always hope that she will, so that she can tell of us of her life. Strong and impetuous, she often finds herself at odds with the elders of her clan, but she refuses to be cowed. (view spoiler)
The mark of a great story-teller is, as someone much wiser has said before me, enchantment. And that is the only word that can describe this novel – enchanting. We are pulled into a world we can no longer live in, even should we choose to, but a world that is still somehow familiar. Though Yanan and Meri would have lived twenty thousand years ago, their worries, fears, jealousies, and love are our own. And it is due to the magic of Ms. Thomas’ words that we find the world of spirits, hunts, bears, and famine as understandable as our own, too.
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