{"id":4588,"date":"2026-10-06T21:03:54","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T21:03:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/angelacuevasalcaniz.com\/?p=4588"},"modified":"2026-10-06T21:03:54","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T21:03:54","slug":"resena-los-hijos-de-la-lluvia-torcuato-luca-de-tena","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/angelacuevasalcaniz.com\/en\/2026\/10\/06\/review-of-the-children-of-the-rain-by-torcuato-luca-de-tena\/","title":{"rendered":"REVIEW: Los hijos de la lluvia (literally, \u201cThe Children of the Rain\u201d) \u2014 Torcuato Luca de Tena"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2705 Status: Read (twenty-odd times) \u2014 and re-reading it right now<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\ud83d\udcda Historical fiction \u00b7 Linked short stories \u00b7 around 225 pages \u00b7 1985<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\ud83c\uddea\ud83c\uddf8 Amazon ES<\/a> \u00b7 Goodreads<\/a> (I haven\u2019t found an English or German edition)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Cover<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

This book has been in my life longer than almost any other. I first read it when I was 8 or 9, in a collection of brown-covered Planeta books that my mother kept at home. I loved it. Since then, I must have re-read it, no joke, twenty-odd times, especially as a child and a teenager, when I re-read books like mad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I recently tracked it down again, and for less, on AbeBooks (psst, one of my best-kept secrets: here you go<\/a>). I bought it, and here I am once more. I\u2019ve read the first two stories and I\u2019m rationing it, because I want it to last.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story (spoiler-free)<\/em><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Hans Weber is a German professor of prehistory. One day, he has a hunting accident and ends up with a bullet lodged in his head. The operation damages part of his brain and leaves him with something very odd: he loses the ability to forget. And he starts remembering his past lives. Four million years\u2019 worth of them, from the first human beings to the beginning of the Christian era. Sometimes he\u2019s a man, sometimes a woman, but almost always an ordinary person of their time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Each memory is a short story, independent of the others. The only thing that links them is him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What the reading community says<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Opinions are quite divided: on Goodreads<\/a> it sits at around 3.7 out of 5, with a little over a hundred ratings. Those who like it love the idea, the leaps through history and how vivid the earliest memories are. Some say you don\u2019t even need to believe in reincarnation to enjoy it. Those who aren\u2019t convinced find the second half heavy going, feel that some stories end abruptly, find the style a touch pompous, or lose track of who is speaking in each memory. In other words: it\u2019s not for everyone, and it\u2019s better to know that beforehand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I actually thought<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s one of those books that left a mark on me, and these are the three stories that stuck:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The one about fear.<\/strong> It\u2019s the first in the book: the memory of a tree-dwelling child, from the days when we still lived in the trees. It has a line that never leaves me: \u201cBeyond my fear, there is nothing\u201d. I loved it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Bronze Age girl.<\/strong> If memory serves, it\u2019s set in the Bronze Age, and what I like is how well it tells things from the little girl\u2019s point of view. It\u2019s the arrival of the legendary King Minos, bringing bronze from other parts of Europe. That part fascinated me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aspasia of Miletus.<\/strong> I discovered her here. Aspasia, Pericles\u2019 lover: I was fascinated by her intelligence, her kindness, her heart, her humanity. And through her I discovered the world of the hetairai, the courtesans, a subject that has had me hooked for as long as I can remember. So much so that one of the projects I had in mind was to write a book about the different kinds of courtesans throughout history.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That said, I didn\u2019t enjoy it all equally. Other stories I remember as very dense and heavy going, and I don\u2019t know whether that will happen again now that I\u2019m re-reading it. Just because it\u2019s one of my favourite books doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s for everyone; you\u2019ve seen what people say above. But it still hooks me, and that\u2019s exactly why I\u2019m rationing it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is this book for you?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

For you, if you like history told from the inside, through ordinary people. Also if you enjoy short stories and don\u2019t mind each one being a world of its own. You don\u2019t need to believe in reincarnation, don\u2019t worry. Maybe not for you if you\u2019re after a continuous plot or neatly rounded endings, because the stories sometimes stop abruptly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fun fact<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Torcuato Luca de Tena was a journalist (he was editor of ABC), a member of the Real Academia Espa\u00f1ola and a Premio Planeta winner. His greatest successes were Edad prohibida<\/em> and Los renglones torcidos de Dios<\/em>. And yes, my edition was from Planeta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My rating<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\u2b50\u2b50\u2b50\u2b50 (3.7 out of 5)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Honestly, I\u2019d put it somewhere between 3.5 and 4, so, for once, I\u2019m going to agree with Goodreads and give it a 3.7. The first stories I adore, and others felt dense and heavy going. Who knows whether the rating will change when I finish this re-read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Have you read it? Which story stayed with you? Tell me below.<\/em> \ud83d\udcac<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I read it when I was 8 or 9 and I\u2019ve re-read it twenty-odd times: Los hijos de la lluvia, by Torcuato Luca de Tena. The story of a man who can\u2019t forget any of his past lives. My spoiler-free review.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4586,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[367],"tags":[401,376,373,209,400,402,250,399],"class_list":["post-4588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-ficcion-historica","tag-libros-favoritos","tag-libros-recomendados","tag-literatura","tag-los-hijos-de-la-lluvia","tag-relatos","tag-resenas","tag-torcuato-luca-de-tena"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/angelacuevasalcaniz.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/angelacuevasalcaniz.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/angelacuevasalcaniz.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angelacuevasalcaniz.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angelacuevasalcaniz.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4588"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/angelacuevasalcaniz.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4589,"href":"https:\/\/angelacuevasalcaniz.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4588\/revisions\/4589"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angelacuevasalcaniz.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/angelacuevasalcaniz.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angelacuevasalcaniz.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/angelacuevasalcaniz.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}