The Book of Joan

February 20, 2017
The future of life on a barren, ravaged Earth is in the hands of a new Joan of Arc in Yuknavitch’s (The Small Backs of Children) muddled novel. After the Wars that battered Earth, the wealthy have withdrawn to CIEL, a floating space platform that’s “far enough from the sun to exist,” but constantly in danger of incineration. Short of resources, CIEL is far from heavenly: its citizens no longer have the ability to procreate, all mention of sex and sexuality is criminal, and nobody is allowed to live past 50. The main art form on CIEL is grafting: burning or otherwise altering the skin. Nearing her final, 50th birthday, the master graft artist Christine begins to burn the outlawed story of Joan on her body. Joan was a child warrior whose great power came from her connection to the natural world. After setting off all Earth’s volcanoes, Joan was publicly executed by Jean de Men—who becomes the despotic ruler of CIEL—but rumors of her death may have been exaggerated. And as Christine and her lifelong friend Trinculo begin to plot a revolt against de Men, an opposition also begins to gather strength on the surface. Intent on finding a language for the body, Yuknavitch attempts to draw on nature writing, gender studies, and the theater, but these strains are poorly synthesized and result in a sloppy and confusing text; readers may struggle to figure out just what Joan’s powers are and how she came by them, for instance. The novel is most memorable from a thematic standpoint, particularly its insistence that “the body is a real place. A territory as vast as Earth.”

Joan could change the future of her dystopian society with her special abilities, but a maniacal despot wants to capture and use her for a different purpose. Narrator Xe Sands jumps right into this novel at a quick pace. As the story progresses, there is, at times, a nonchalance in her tone that works well with the sarcastic first-person point of view. At other times, Sands shifts between a matter-of-fact delivery and notes of emotional urgency. This desperation more often appears when the love story of Leone and Joan is unfolding. Given the uncertainty of their existence in a culture at war, the emotional highs and lows in Sands's voice give the story added credibility. T.E.C. � AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

Starred review from February 15, 2017

Yuknavitch's latest book (after The Small Backs of Children) opens as the quintessential postapocalyptic dystopian nightmare. Life on Earth has been extinguished, and the survivors eke out an existence in the orbital habitat known as CIEL. These survivors, as the price of their entrance, get to live only 50 years. Forty-nine-year-old Christine tells the story of how the martyred hero Joan opposed the world domination of maniacal leader Jean de Men, which brought about the geo-catastrophe. The surviving humans have lost their hair, skin color, and sexual organs and have also developed a literary tradition of electrosurgical branding on skin grafts, of which Christine is a virtuoso. After news arrives that Joan, publicly executed years ago, is still alive on the wasted earth, the novel shifts to Joan's point of view: she has supernatural powers and can even raise the dead, but only for a day. We learn her life story and watch as she joins with other rogue humans, regains power and influence, and unites with Christine in CIEL to combat evil. VERDICT This ambitious novel encompasses a wide canvas to spin a captivating commentary on the hubris of humanity. An interesting blend of posthuman literary body politics and paranormal ecological transmutation; highly recommended. [See Prepub Alert, 11/17/16.]--Henry Bankhead, San Rafael P.L., CA

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2016

A ferocious, gorgeously written statement of art's powers and dangers in a violent world, Yuknavitch's The Small Backs of Children remains one of my favorite books of 2015. Her new title, featuring humans living on a platform floating above a radioactive Earth, is a futuristic retelling of Joan of Arc's story. With a 25,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2017
A retelling of the Joan of Arc story set in a terrifying near future of environmental and political chaos.Earth in 2049 is ravaged. A geocatastrophe has swallowed coasts and islands; supervolcanoes and solar storms have dimmed the sun and reduced the planet to "a dirt clod, floating in space." The wealthiest of Earth's inhabitants now live in CIEL, "a suborbital complex" floating just in view of their former planetary home. Christine Pizan (a nod to medieval court writer Christine de Pisan), at age 49, resembles the other inhabitants of CIEL: physically androgynous, completely white "like the albumen of an egg," and covered in scars and skin grafts. These deliberate body modifications, or "skinstories," are Christine's expertise, and they are some of the only reminders she has left of life on Earth, along with her beloved friend and fellow CIELian Trinculo (who resembles his buffoonish namesake from Shakespeare's The Tempest). In particular, Christine has seared into her body the story of Joan, a young eco-terrorist from the time of the geocatastrophe--and when her and Trinculo's survival is threatened, she turns to her body's offering of Joan's tale for inspiration. Yuknavitch (The Small Backs of Children, 2015, etc.) writes with her characteristic fusion of poetic precision and barbed ferocity, and the ingenuity of the world she creates astounds even in the face of the novel's ambitiously messy sprawl. Perhaps even more astounding is Yuknavitch's prescience: readers will be familiar with the figure of Jean de Men, a celebrity-turned-drone-wielding-dictator who first presided over the Wars on Earth and now lords over CIEL, having substituted "all gods, all ethics, and all science with the power of representation, a notion born on Earth, evolved through media and technology." A harrowing and timely entry into the canon of speculative fiction.

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March 1, 2017
Burning is an art. So begins Yuknavitch's (The Backs of Small Children, 2015) newest novel, a regeneration of Joan of Arc's story. To escape a global war of racial, economic, and religious differences, Earth's wealthiest retreated to CIEL, an orbiting space platform. Joan of Dirt, a young opposition warrior gifted with the power to control nature, resolved the conflict by causing a devastating geological catastrophe. The station's leader, Jean de Men made Joan pay for her transgression with a fiery public execution. The wealthy also paid a price, quickly becoming hairless and genderless due to CIEL's poor radiation protection. Survival became about seeking new forms of artistic and sensual stimulus, with skin grafting as a new form of self-expression. While burning the heroine's legend onto her own skin, a renowned artist learns Joan is still aliveon Earth. Desperate to recapture her, de Men plans to use the resurrected Joan in a horrendous experiment. The heart-stopping climax will surprise readers of this dystopian tale that ponders the meanings of gender, sex, love, and life.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)