A fascinating topic – the last days of traditional Mongolian herding culture during the Cultural Revolution – but a really-not-good novel. The book is long and repetitive; the characters barely change and spout big chunks of history-speak at each other. It seems to be barely fictionalized, and would have worked much better as memoir (with photos!), I think—but it’s very sad and would be more painful to read if it were better-written. The ideas and some of the images (poor Little Wolf’s stubbornness, the mosquitos, the felt carpet boats) are memorable.
Out here, the grass and the grassland are the life, the big life. All else is little life that depends on the big life for survival. Even wolves and humans are little life. …. Grass is the big life, yet it is the most fragile, the most miserable life. Its roots are shallow, the soil is thin, and though it lives on the the ground, it cannot run away. … When you kill off the big life of the grassland, all the little lives are doomed.
Both Easterners and Westerners all refer to the land as the mother of humanity. How then can anyone who does injury to Mother Earth be considered civilized?