Joan is the story of Jeanne d'Arc as it more likely was. Instead of a wan, pious, delicate seer of a girl, this Joan is big, tough, surly, who has seen too much of the world by age fifteen. This world is dirty and gritty and full of pride, ego, happenstance, and a poverty-stricken girl who doesn't understand what rituals mean in royal courts.
I adored this Joan. She was very much in the vein of one of my own heroines—a survivor.
A stunning feminist reimagining of the life of Joan of Arc - perfect for fans of Cecily, Ariadne and Matrix
'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' Hilary Mantel, twice Booker Prize-winning author of The Mirror & the Light
'A glorious, sweeping novel . . . Richly imagined, poignant and inspiring' Jennifer Saint, author of Ariadne
'Chen earns the comparison [to Mantel] thanks to her vivid, visceral and boldly immediate storytelling . . . a hypnotic heroine for our time'…
This is ultimately a contemporary romance. But the writing style is excellent and beautiful. Each sentence was like biting into an overripe mango, so full that juice dribbles down your chin. And in the vein of contemporary romance, it has sex scenes, and is a love story.
I also loved peeking into this very specific world, inhabited by emotionally thoughtful people who understand real grief. While this is a romance, the conversation of grief rode shotgun. Highly, highly, highly recommend.
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER ONE OF THE EVENING STANDARD'S BLOCKBUSTER BOOK TRENDS OF THE YEAR SHORTLISTED FOR FOYLES FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR NOMINATED FOR THE GOODREADS CHOICE AWARDS FOR ROMANCE A ZOELLA BOOK CLUB PICK
'This book filled me with excitement and possibilities.' Jenny Colgan 'Fabulous, fabulous, fabulous.' @savidgereads 'Say hello to the book of the summer' @bettysbooksuk 'Fantastic . . . I cannot put it down.' @thebibliotucker ____________ Have you fallen for this INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING novelist's sizzling hot entrance into the world of romance?
I have been reading Louise Erdrich's books for a long time, and I feel like you can see these arcs of her writing evolve. So far, The Sentence is my favorite. Why?
Partly because it starts with the absurdity of a well-meaning body snatch. How do you get better than that?
Because when you first meet Tookie, she is an addict--maybe of substances, but mostly an addict of users. Her mother was an addict, so it's no small wonder that she finds herself wanting emotionally unavailable women. She goes to jail--framed by the two women who asked her to be the go-between over this man's dead body. When she is released years later, she finds herself in Minneapolis, surly, uncertain, spiky.
She gets a job at Louise Erdrich's bookstore, and deals with Louise (who is her boss, and is also the author of this book?).
But what starts as giggly absurdity, drills down slowly into emotional, weighty discussions of what family means. Who do we protect? And who do we survive?
In this stunning and timely novel, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich creates a wickedly funny ghost story, a tale of passion, of a complex marriage and of a woman's relentless errors.
Louise Erdrich's latest novel, The Sentence, asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book. A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but…
In 1780, the young Queen Charlotte hosts a ball for her birthday. Jane Laurent has not been to a ball because at age sixteen, she isn’t ready. Raised in the country, Jane appointed herself apprentice to a midwife—a calling she wants to pursue. But the family traipses into London so Jane’s older sister Emma can land herself a lord.
The family celebrates when lovely Emma catches the eye of the handsome viscount Andrepont. But the night of the engagement ball, dependable Emma runs away with a soldier instead. The family panics and pushes Jane forward to fulfill the marriage contract with the older and oddly unsettling Lord Andrepont. How bad could he be that pragmatic, reliable Emma ran away?
