The Book of Joan

March 26, 2018 1:09 PM - by Lidia Yuknavitch

In the near future, world wars have transformed the earth into a battleground. Fleeing the unending violence and the planet’s now-radioactive surface, humans have regrouped to a mysterious platform known as CIEL, hovering over their erstwhile home. The changed world has turned evolution on its head: the surviving humans have become sexless, hairless, pale-white creatures floating in isolation, inscribing stories upon their skin.
posted by DirtyOldTown (4 comments total)

I wanted to like this. I feel like it was trying some interesting stuff about how we link sex, gender, sexuality, and identity. And there was some gorgeous prose. But somewhere around page 80, I realized the nearly the entire book to that point had been set in a single room, with one isolated future human narrating a podcast into a recorder while they ritually burned erotica into their skin. It was a lot to ask of a reader and I cannot say I hung in there much longer.

I'm curious how all of the ruminating on gender/the body/sex/etc. would come across to someone who was trans. I couldn't really imagine during the section I read how it might sound to someone with that experience. Liberating? Offensive? I do not know.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:23 PM on March 26, 2018

I just read this, finishing it literally yesterday. I haaaated it. I thought it had clunky language, used an allegorical plot as an excuse to handwave away stuff that simply made no sense, and towards the end there is an arguably transphobic moment that had no particular relevance that I could see to the overall narrative. I could go on for a long time, honestly.

Tons of writers I respect seem to think a lot of Yuknavitch's work, though, and I may give her another chance, maybe with her memoir.
posted by kyrademon at 2:10 AM on March 30, 2018 [2 favorites]

This book hurts me because I love all of the elements that compose it but still could not finish it. Something unidentifiable grated on me every step of the way.
posted by tofu_crouton at 4:16 AM on March 30, 2018 [1 favorite]

This book hurts me because I love all of the elements that compose it but still could not finish it. Something unidentifiable grated on me every step of the way.

This is more or less exactly how I felt. Although on the whole, I am with kyrademon on the clunky language, there were solid bits here and there that were so good, they probably kept me reading much longer than I might have bothered.

Although I was a bit more conflicted on the prose than the judge, this bit from the ToB judgment rang (mostly) true for me:

Although the prose in The Book of Joan is phenomenal, I wish there was more world-building. I was constantly taken out of the story because I wanted to try to make sense of the world.

posted by DirtyOldTown at 8:16 AM on March 30, 2018