Wednesday, November 28, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Book of Joan by Lidia Yuknavitch




The Book of Joan is a hell of a book, that packs a LOT into its short length (it's under 300 pages, and the audiobook is under 8 hours).  A SciFi story that takes the story of Joan of Arc, as well as several other real life people (Christine Pizan and Jean du Meun) into a post-apocalyptic SF world, the Book of Joan tells a story of the importance of control over one's own body, reproduction, and of life in general.  Note that you don't need to have a familiarity with any of the real life people transplanted through time in this story in order to read this book (I didn't really with most of them).

The result is a fascinating book that has a ton of ideas that it is not afraid to put front and center.  If you're looking for a good "story" or an interesting plot, The Book of Joan is probably not for you - Yuknavitch's characters and story move in ways that are clearly meant to get her ideas across (complete with character dialogue that often sounds like it was taken from essays) rather than in ways that are meant to form a cohesive plot without holes.  But somehow, it works, and the characters themselves work, so it's definitely worth a look for anyone willing to read this type of work.

Note:  This was another book I read as an audiobook, and the reader is very good, so it's worth your time if you're looking for a book in that format.

Trigger Warning:  There's no rape in this book but violence toward bodies is a major act of the antagonist, so if that's an issue, it might be a concern for some readers.


-------------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
Around the year 2049, the Earth is a dying ball of dirt.  Some of the wealthier members of humanity have escaped to CIEL, a space station hovering in orbit.  But whether those onboard CIEL can be called human any longer is questionable - the populace has devolved into all white bodies without working genetalia and reproductive systems.  CIEL is ruled by the fascist leader Jean de Men, a former celebrity who used his fame to become a major political leader in the war that eventually destroyed the world, and de Men has decreed that any sexual activity is a crime altogether.

Enter Christine Pizan, a woman in her last year of life on CIEL who is tired of Jean de Men's rule and plans to fight back.  Christine specializes in "grafts" - the process of burning writing into one's own skin in order to form stories, and plans her masterpiece: a story told upon her and her followers' bodies about Joan of Dirt, the young woman who heard the song of the Earth in her head and could wield its devastating power and whose fight against Jean de Men ended the dying planet's life once and for all....before being burnt at the stake for her efforts.  And when Christine's love Trinculo is sentenced to execution, Christine plans to put her plan into motion to save Trinculo and destroy Jean de Men at the same time, in one epic confrontation.

But while Christine plans on the station, down on the Earth there is a secret:  Joan of Dirt is alive.  Together with her love Leone, Joan travels through underground tunnels in the world with almost no purpose left besides her incredible power, and Joan remains perhaps the last intact human still possessing sexuality and the ability to give life.  But forces on CIEL are aware of Joan's survival, and soon Joan will be forced to make a choice about what she wants and about how life should go on, because only Joan has the power to pave the way for any future at all....
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Book of Joan is split into three parts (or three "books" as the book itself refers to them), with the voice being used by the author changing from part to part.  In the first part, our first person narrator is Christine, with her plotting her final action against Jean de Men aboard CIEL and occasional narration in third person of Joan's story up to the day the Earth was killed.  In the second part, Joan becomes our first person narrator and the story leaves CIEL entirely, focusing on Joan's survival and actions after her execution.  In the final part, the two stories come together, but Joan remains the first person narrator, with Christine's story being told now in the third person, a flip from Part 1.

This works really well to establish how the characters work and the ideas that permeate their lives and this world, which is the real purpose of this story.  In part 1 Christine is enamored with the idea of Joan and what she represents, and who she actually is and feels isn't as important (hence Joan's parts in that story being in third person) - Christine even imagines Joan's loves without any care if those imagined feelings are true (as it turns out, they are).  In Part 2, we meet Joan as she is after the story Christine knows, and she's a far more devastated person than Christine thinks, basically living on autopilot with little hope after all she has seen.  In Part 3 when it all comes together, it still is mostly Joan's story, not Christine's, so Joan remains in first person (although the book appropriately finishes Christine's story).  Despite the fact that this is a book where characters speak in dialogue that would never actually come out of a person's mouth and not in a political treatise, the writing is so well done in these modes as to make it work.

And The Book of Joan is interested in a lot of ideas - from the devastation of the planet wreaked by humanity and the need for humanity to sacrifice itself so the planet can emerge living again from its dead dirt form, to the ideas of feminine power (the main antagonist's name is "Jean de Men" instead of his inspiration "Jean de Meun" for a reason), to the ideas of the importance of control over reproduction and sexuality, there are a lot of ideas at work here, and Yuknavitch uses this world well to convey them.  Oh and the idea of what exactly love is.  The point is there's a lot here, and it's all very interesting stuff and generally well done - her ideas do get a little muddled around the 70-80% mark, but the ending pulls much of it together.

It should be noted that this is not a book that cares a ton about its plot being consistent and logical - there are plot holes wide enough for a truck to drive through here (for example, how Christine's actions aren't detected given Jean de Men's control or how Joan and Leone never meet any of the allegedly surviving human groups in their travels), but honestly they don't matter - Yuknavitch has the plot bring her characters around to where they need to go for the emotional beats and ideas to make sense, and it works well enough that the shortcuts taken to get to those spots never feel wrong.  The book is also pretty damn dark, if you couldn't tell from the summary which might not be everyone's cup of tea.

Anyhow, this book has been sitting on my prospective audiobooks to read list for a while, and I'm glad I finally got around to it - it was fascinating to listen to and very unlike pretty much anything I'd read before.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)