Only a few members of the bookclub finished this book, mainly because not everyone enjoyed the story and the writing style. We thought that the actual historical story behind this fictionalised version of Joan of Arc's life was an interesting story to look at. However, it was felt that this take on the story was not very realistic compared to other fictionalised historical works currently available. Some of the language used felt a little incongruous to the historical nature of the story as well, which we understood as it's a story meant to be read by people today but we also felt that it was a little awkward sounding.
One of the big questions we had was how Joan managed to convince the armies to follow her because clearly as history shows she did manage this. We felt that she must have had a very strong personality, which the author showed us as the book went on. She must also have had a great deal of religious fervour which made her very powerful, and also gave her the strength to kill soldiers even though she felt very unhappy doing this in the book.
We noted that we found some elements of the story difficult to understand given that we are all living in the 21st century and don't really have a full understanding of how things were done in Joan's time. This hindered some of our understanding of how the politics etc worked. Maybe we would have understood more and enjoyed more about the book if we had a little more background knowledge ourselves. However, this could be said of most historical retellings and somehow other books manage to give the reader enough background to enjoy the story without it becoming too boring.
As with all literary retellings of historical events there were clearly some liberties taken to make the story more interesting and also purely to fill in the gaps in Joan's history where little is know about her. For example, we often read bits in this book about how Joan is feeling or her thoughts on a certain matter and these cannot have come from a primary source so they are clearly guess work on the part of the author. Interestingly not much was made of the actual court-case which was one of the elements of Jona's life about which there was most evidence. This might have been interesting to look into for the reader.
Overall we felt that this book sits somewhere between a straight historical retelling and an interesting piece of literature, but somehow manages not to be a good example of either thing.
Overall we gave this book 3.5 out of 10.
One of the big questions we had was how Joan managed to convince the armies to follow her because clearly as history shows she did manage this. We felt that she must have had a very strong personality, which the author showed us as the book went on. She must also have had a great deal of religious fervour which made her very powerful, and also gave her the strength to kill soldiers even though she felt very unhappy doing this in the book.
We noted that we found some elements of the story difficult to understand given that we are all living in the 21st century and don't really have a full understanding of how things were done in Joan's time. This hindered some of our understanding of how the politics etc worked. Maybe we would have understood more and enjoyed more about the book if we had a little more background knowledge ourselves. However, this could be said of most historical retellings and somehow other books manage to give the reader enough background to enjoy the story without it becoming too boring.
As with all literary retellings of historical events there were clearly some liberties taken to make the story more interesting and also purely to fill in the gaps in Joan's history where little is know about her. For example, we often read bits in this book about how Joan is feeling or her thoughts on a certain matter and these cannot have come from a primary source so they are clearly guess work on the part of the author. Interestingly not much was made of the actual court-case which was one of the elements of Jona's life about which there was most evidence. This might have been interesting to look into for the reader.
Overall we felt that this book sits somewhere between a straight historical retelling and an interesting piece of literature, but somehow manages not to be a good example of either thing.
Overall we gave this book 3.5 out of 10.
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