The Maid

Locations
Call Number: Fiction
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction	4-week checkout	On Shelf

"The girl who led an army, the peasant who crowned a king, the maid who became a legend. It is the fifteenth century, and the tumultuous Hundred Years' War rages on. France is under siege, English soldiers tear through the countryside destroying all who cross their path, and Charles VII, the uncrowned king, has neither the strength nor the will to rally his army. And in the quiet of her parents' garden in Domrémy, a peasant girl sees a spangle of light and hears a powerful voice speak her name. Jehanne. The story of Jehanne d'Arc, the visionary and saint who believed she had been chosen by God, who led an army and saved her country, has captivated our imagination for centuries. But the story of Jehanne--the girl--whose sister was murdered by the English, who sought an escape from a violent father and a forced marriage, who taught herself to ride and fight, and who somehow found the courage and tenacity to persuade first one, then two, then thousands to follow her, is at once thrilling, unexpected, and heartbreaking. Rich with unspoken love and battlefield valor, The Maid is a novel about the power and uncertainty of faith, and the exhilarating and devastating consequences of fame"-- Provided by publisher.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

Library Journal Review
School Library Journal Review
Publishers Weekly Review
Summary / Annotation
Fiction Profile
Excerpt
Author Notes

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Thrilling, Compelling, and Perplexing -- like Jehanne d'Arc Herself submitted by hgerety on July 22, 2020, 4:11pm I went into The Maid knowing the Jehanne d'Arc story mostly from high school history class - and Luc Besson's movie, The Messenger. I assumed this book would be a guilty pleasure - not necessarily something I'd want to read again, but fun, and hopefully only mildly irritating in its anachronism. After all, it's hard to find a novel about a great woman in history that doesn't insert modern sensibilities into the character's mind, so I was bracing myself for a re-write that down played Joan's faith.

But then I read the first page. The first thing that struck me is that Cutter takes Jehanne's faith very, very seriously. And not only that, but she gives you a taste of it - her language is most inventive and fresh when she's writing about Jehanne's experience of God and the saints and angel that visit her.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about The Maid is that it's almost all completely true. Her predictions of the tide of battles, of one of her wounds, of the time of her own death; her jumping, unscathed, 50-70 feet from the tower where she was imprisoned by the Burgundians - it's all true.

Jehanne d'Arc was - and is - an extremely compelling, mysterious character in history. There's still strong contention over whether she was carrying out a divine mission, or whether she was mentally (or physically) ill - whether she fought in battle with the French army, or was merely a standardbearer - whether she was raped in prison - how she managed to convince the dauphin and France to believe her and give her the means to complete her mission. As a Christian, I find her compelling and perplexing - with all the violence and nationalism integral to her story, she doesn't fit easily into my idea of what a Christian looks like, but I can't write her off as a lunatic.

Cutter's interpretation of Jehanne's character was similar to Luc Besson's movie -- the line between her divine mission and her often wrathful, prideful will is often unclear. But both sides are there - it is neither wholly one nor the other that drives her. This, together with Cutter's vivid interpretation of Jehanne's visions, makes for a character at once thrillingly unlike ourselves and yet still just as subject to the same human sins as any of us. We're also made to feel the poignancy of how Jehanne's apartness feels to her - to know that she will never be married to anyone but God, will never have children, and she is left to anticipate the time of her death; an apartness that, as Cutter notes in the book, perhaps only Christ shares. And there are many, many men - half a dozen, maybe - who remind her of her loneliness, and who she must keep at arm's length to remain true to her mission.

The book was a wonderful read, and I read it at a breakneck pace even as I knew the end - and her end - was coming. It was a hard read, though, too - it's a book about total war, and includes many, many vivid battle scenes that are hard to take, as well as crude (but believable) language. It also includes at least one psychopath, Gilles du Rais, whose particular violent perversions are not only nauseating but linger in the mind.

A nice touch was Saint Margaret calling Jehanne by the nickname "cabbage" - which is, strangely enough, a real term of endearment in French ("chou-fleur").

Cutter's book includes a brief factual note at the end, stating what things she interpreted, adapted, added or otherwise changed, as well as a list of books and authors whose work was helpful in writing The Maid - both of which are great resources that I'm glad to have. I also appreciate how closely Cutter hewed to the facts - she gave us her view of Jehanne's character without spoiling the true story.

Ultimately, it was a thrilling book , and I plan to reread it. It has reignited my interest in Jehanne d'Arc, and I'm happy to have read it.