Joan by Katherine J. Chen is a novelisation of the life of Joan of Arc right from her childhood to the time of her death. We find her a wild youth in Domremy being beaten daily by her father. Joan’s father has lost a bet to his friends that his next child would be a son. Now he doesn’t know what to do with a daughter having already had an older beautiful daughter and plenty of sons. She is of no use to him and he dislikes her from the get go for having lost that bet. Jacques d’Arc is a cruel man and everybody knows it.
The books focuses in for a long section on Joan’s childhood and in particular her relationships with her father, her sister Catherine and her uncle. Joan’s childhood is hard and filled with little joy. Her sister Catherine is a kind friend and sister who loves Joan dearly. Their bond is beautiful. When tragedy strikes her sister it takes Joan on a new path away from Domremy.
Her uncle appears in and out of her life at various points and is a firm friend of Joan’s. He is a story teller, a rogue, a kind man and the bringer of bad news. His stories stay with Joan throughout her life. Her uncle becomes another loss of someone she is unlikely to see again.
And so the list grows of the people Joan has left behind, starting a new life away from the town she has grown up in. Her life takes her away from the little girl running through the fields and climbing trees into the story we all know.
Chen’s story is a different view of Joan. It doesn’t hold her up as a saintly figure who can speak to God. She is portrayed as a valiant young woman who wants revenge on the men who hurt her sister. She wants to obliterate the enemy for very personal reasons that are not necessarily aligned to the Dauphin’s wishes or for the power of France. She wants to be powerful as a woman is not allowed to be but also kind. She is not the trouser wearing soldier that history sometimes portrays her as but as a tall strong woman who still wishes to be herself and to be a woman but also to no longer be afraid of men. It makes her a much more relatable character, especially for women.
I preferred the section on her childhood to the section where she meets the Dauphin and goes to war. I found more interest in her story as a person than I did in seeing her become a battle icon. I was less interested in how she would fair in battle and more interested in how things would unravel beyond that. From seeing so much of her rise I wanted to see how she would feel as to whether she had achieved her objectives or not.
All in all I did enjoy the book as a whole even if I did feel I was less interested in the later sections. I was still invested enough that I wanted to read until the end. I did find it a very interesting take on such an iconic figure as Joan of Arc. It did bring the character to life for me. Hilary Mantel gives it an incredible review on the book’s cover saying that ‘it is as if the author has crept inside a statue and breathed a soul into it, re-creating Joan of Arc as a woman for our time.’ That is incredible praise to have received from such a critically acclaimed historical fiction writer who writes herself with real historical characters. Having read this book I can see what she means. It is a very modern depiction of Joan and a different take on someone that we may think we already know something about. It challenges some views and shows her in a different way to the expected.
Chen has been very clear that this version of Joan is her own and a work of fiction. She has made the characters her own and it is not a direct representation of history. It makes for an interesting read and brings something new to a well known character.
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