Book of Joan (Yuknavitch) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
Post-apocalyptic fiction too often pays lip service to serious problems like climate change while allowing the reader to walk away unscathed, cocooned in an ironic escapism and convinced that the impending disaster is remote. Not so with Lidia Yuknavitch's brilliant and incendiary new novel, which speaks to the reader in raw, boldly honest terms.… Yet it's also radically new, full of maniacal invention and page-turning momentum…Yuknavitch's prose is passionate and lyrical…Fusing grand themes and the visceral details of daily life…using both realism and fabulism…to break through the white noise of a consumerist culture that tries to commodify post-apocalyptic fiction, to render it safe. But in Yuknavitch's work there's no quick cauterizing of the wound, nothing to allow us to engage in escapism. The result is a rich, heady concoction, rippling with provocative ideas. There is nothing in The Book of Joan that is not a great gift to Yuknavitch's readers, if only they are ready to receive it.
Jeff VanderMeer - New York Times Book Review


Joan [of Arc] offers herself as the perfect figure for Yuknavitch’s new novel. Translated into a dystopian future, this New Joan of Dirt serves as emblem for all the stalwart commoners in whose crushing defeat lies a kind of inviolate spiritual victory.… [The Book of Joan] offers a wealth of pathos, with plenty of resonant excruciations and some disturbing meditations on humanity’s place in creation.… [It] concludes in a bold and satisfying apotheosis like some legend out of The Golden Bough and reaffirms that even amid utter devastation and ruin, hope can still blossom.
Washington Post


The future of life on a barren, ravaged Earth is in the hands of a new Joan of Arc in Yuknavitch’s  muddled novel.… 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..
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) [T]he quintessential postapocalyptic dystopian nightmare.… [A] captivating commentary on the hubris of humanity. An interesting blend of posthuman literary body politics and paranormal ecological transmutation; highly recommended. —Henry Bankhead, San Rafael P.L., CA
Library Journal


The heart-stopping climax will surprise readers of this dystopian tale that ponders the meanings of gender, sex, love, and life.
Booklist


A retelling of the Joan of Arc story set in a terrifying near future of environmental and political chaos..… [T]he world Yuknatitch creates astounds even in the face of the novel's ambitiously messy sprawl.… [H]arrowing and timely.
Kirkus Reviews