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]
Synopsis
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.
Reception
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]
