Joan

Joan

By Katherine Chen

1412. France is mired in a losing war against England. Its people are starving. Its king is in hiding. From this chaos emerges a teenage girl who will turn the tide of battle and lead the French to victory, an unlikely hero whose name will echo across the centuries.

In Katherine J. Chen's hands, the myth and legend of Joan of Arc is transformed into a flesh-and-blood young woman: reckless, steel-willed, and brilliant. This deeply researched novel is a sweeping narrative of her life, from a childhood steeped in both joy and violence to her meteoric rise to fame at the head of the French army, where she navigates both the perils of the battlefield and the equally treacherous politics of the royal court. Many are threatened by a woman who leads, and Joan draws wrath and suspicion from all corners, even as her first taste of fame and glory leave her vulnerable to her own powerful ambition.

This took me forever to read, almost six weeks. I did okay ish in the beginning but then read the afterward where the author said that they just made stuff up and changed the historically accepted facts (like, that Joan didn't actually fight) to suit her narrative and that soured me on it. 

It's also not nearly as exciting a book as you'd think it would be, being that it is based on the wholly unlikely story about a woman peasant who was elevated to the savior of France during the Hundred Years' War.

We spend almost somewhere around a third to a half of the book on various made-up scenes of Joan's youth, centering primarily around her abusive father. The village is attacked and her sister raped. Joan finds herself summarily ejected from her house and fate lands her in the king's lap after she performs miracles like: breaking a man's wrist with one hand, landing every arrow on target, being a virtuoso at every weapon she picks up. It's so weirdly unreal I can't think why Chen chose to go in this direction. Why spend time trying to come up with a back story on how Joan became so strong and self assured and then just make her a Mary Sue? 

In this version, Joan doesn't set foot in a church for her whole youth, but then prays to God for victory. She's better than anyone else in the army despite never having any experience or training. I felt like rolling my eyes every time Joan hits multiple bullseyes, which happens a lot.

The better parts of the book are those when we're offered explanations for Joan's accomplishments and downfall: her grit, and her belief in the rightness of her cause. But we also spend just a few chapters on the crucial battles and none at all after her capture by enemy forces. I mean, we all know what happened, but the framing period feels off too. No pages to spare for her trial?

I originally read this one for the "left-handed character" prompt but I don't believe her handedness was mentioned once in the whole book, and after I re-categorized Convenience Store Woman, thought this would nicely fit the single lady prompt.

24: A Book With A Happily Single Woman Protagonist

 

Girl, Serpent, Thorn

Girl, Serpent, Thorn

By Melissa Bashardoust

There was and there was not, as all stories begin, a princess cursed to be poisonous to the touch. But for Soraya, who has lived her life hidden away, apart from her family, safe only in her gardens, it's not just a story.

As the day of her twin brother's wedding approaches, Soraya faces a choice. Below in the dungeon is a demon who holds the knowledge she craves, the answer to her freedom. And above is a young man who isn't afraid of her, whose eyes linger not with fear, but with an understanding of who she is beneath the poison.

When her choices lead to consequences she never imagined, Soraya begins to question who she is and who she is becoming... human or demon. Princess or monster.  

I don't really recall Bashardoust's first book, Girls Made of Snow and Glass, but I do remember liking it well enough, and I'd had no objection to reading this second novel, which, if you look past how annoying the protagonist is, is also a pretty good read. But alas, what is a book without a protagonist?

So, as you may suspect from the blurb, Soraya puts her trust in the wrong person and in an effort to remove her poisonous curse, ends up somewhat accidentally letting a 100 year old demon rain destruction on her family and home and murder a bunch of people during her brother's wedding. "Accidentally" in the sense that she very much meant to do what she did, she just didn't realize there would be consequences.  Or well, she knew there would be consequences, she just didn't think anyone would notice them?

As one reviewer put it: "Soraya isn't a particularly clever or brave heroine." Accurate. So maybe she's a beacon to all those middling girls, who have no particular virtue to recommend them, but Soraya doesn't even really seem to have strength of character either.  She naturally doesn't want to be shut up in a room unable to touch people, but instead of asking her mother about the curse, lets several demons persuade her to steal the family's protective talisman and burn it, setting off the aforementioned Red Wedding-style chain of events. 

Then, after she's been forcibly taken to the demon mountain base, and appears to regret the fact that her country has been taken over and she's caused the deaths of a lot of people (soon to include her own brother and mother) she's presented with the former captain of the guard, who says he always knew she was dangerous her instinct is to... kick him. And then after she's freed the "good" demon, Parvenah, from prison, where Parvenah had been stashed for the last century by the bad demon, Soraya turns around and betrays Parvenah again to the bad demon (long story). Parvenah's sisters ask Soraya to try to rescue her again and Soraya is like... it's too hard, man, I feel like I keep making bad choices, I just give up.

I mean, yes, she has been making bad choices, and yes, she comes around eventually, but what a dishrag. Not the kind of person I would build a whole story around. It makes the whole thing feel like an obligation, which, I mean, it kind of was. Sometimes I don't know why I do these reading challenges, I feel like I have to force myself to finish half the books.

 

5: A Book With A Snake On The Cover Or In The Title

 

Convenience Store Woman

Convenience Store Woman

By Sayaka Murata

Translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori

Convenience Store Woman is the heartwarming and surprising story of thirty-six-year-old Tokyo resident Keiko Furukura. Keiko has never fit in, neither in her family, nor in school, but when at the age of eighteen she begins working at the Hiiromachi branch of "Smile Mart," she finds peace and purpose in her life. In the store, unlike anywhere else, she understands the rules of social interaction—many are laid out line by line in the store's manual—and she does her best to copy the dress, mannerisms, and speech of her colleagues, playing the part of a "normal" person excellently, more or less. Managers come and go, but Keiko stays at the store for eighteen years. It's almost hard to tell where the store ends and she begins. Keiko is very happy, but the people close to her, from her family to her coworkers, increasingly pressure her to find a husband, and to start a proper career, prompting her to take desperate action...

I was going to use this book for a happily single female protagonist but the plot of the book (such as it is) involves her getting together with a man in order to appease her family and co-workers. So I'm not entirely sure that either "happy" or "single" fit, since she is not really either. Except at the end, when she discovers that her true calling is working in a convenience store after all and leaves her ersatz boyfriend and job interview.

 

This was an interesting book, particularly at first, when we're getting the skinny on Furukura's life and all the ways she doesn't feel normal, but has found comfort and enjoyment in the rules and processes of working in her store.  

But her delicate peace is disturbed when a slacker, misogynistic co-worker is fired and she joins forces with him to find out if everyone would prefer that she "act" normal (i.e. have a boyfriend and have ambition) even if said boyfriend is a waste of space and clearly just a mooch taking advantage of her. And it turns out that people do prefer that! 

This part is where it goes off the rails a bit. It's clearly aiming for a satirical expose of the ways in which "performing" are more socially acceptable regardless of whether it's good for that person but Shiraha (aforementioned terrible co-worker) is obviously a dingbat, and everyone's reactions are so overblown (not one person is suspicious or concerned that Furukura has moved an unemployed misogynist into her bathroom and quit her job but instead immediately start inviting them both to drinks out) that it loses its impact by getting too cartoon-y too fast. 

I think the central premise is good and could offer a critique on societal expectations, but it feels like it could have been presented better. If for example we'd seen this scam develop over a longer period and get more and more involved as they see people buy in to it. Or if literally any one person was a little more skeptical, it might have felt more earned, more real. But instead it begins to feel thin and ridiculous. It also makes no sense that Furukura would be so intrigued by someone who is so terrible at working at the convenience store, which appears to be the only thing she values.

 

Luckily it's saved from complete failure by not dwelling too long on the relationship aspect of it and ending on the perfect note of Furukura realizing that the most important thing is her work in the convenience store, and she drops all pretense of a conventional life.

For some reason, maybe because of how Murata describes the store, it reminds me of the ending scene of House of Stairs, when the three brainwashed kids see a traffic light and start dancing, mindlessly, as they've been trained to do. You go on dancing your bad self to the light of the frozen foods section, Furukura.

 

 

 10: A Book You Got For Free

Before the Coffee Gets Cold

Before the Coffee Gets Cold

By Toshigazu Kawaguchi

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.

In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer's, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.

But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the café, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . .

Oh man, I did not enjoy this book. I don't know if it was the translation or if the writing is just bad or if Japanese people interact like they have never met other humans before, but there were so many incredibly stilted conversations and weird tics that it was like reading a manual and not a book. It's extremely episodic too, basically four separate stories about specific "customers" going back in time, and some little bit of carryover with the employees from episode to episode. But since it was so episodic, I guess Kawaguchi decided that we needed to rehash all the intro stuff over and over again each time, which was the most boring and also the most bizarre parts of each story. 

These are some excerpts from the first story, about a woman whose boyfriend breaks up with her so he can go work in the United States:

“It’s possible to go back, right?” she asked, uneasily. 

It may have been prudent to begin with this question. But it was pointless to realize that now.

“Well, is it or not?” she asked, staring directly at Kazu on the other side of the counter.

“Hmm. Ah…” Kazu replied. 

Fumiko’s eyes once again lit up. She was not hearing a no.

An air of excitement started to surround her. “Please send me back!”

She pleaded so energetically that she seemed about to leap over the counter. 

“You want to go back and do what?” asked Hirai coolly, between sips of her tepid coffee. 

“I’d make amends.” Her face was serious.

“I see…” said Hirai with a shrug.

There's absolutely no sense that these two people are having the same conversation together. Here's another excerpt, from later in this same, interminable conversation about going back in time:

“Look. I want you to listen, and listen carefully. Okay?”

“What?” Fumiko’s body tensed up. 

“You can go back. It’s true… you can go back, but…”

“But..?”

“When you go back, no matter how hard you try, the present won’t change.”

The present won’t change. This was something Fumiko was totally unprepared for – something she couldn’t take in. “Huh?” she said loudly without thinking. 

Kazu calmly continued. “Even if you go back to the past and tell your… um, boyfriend who went to America how you feel…”

“Even if I tell him how I feel?”

“The present won’t change.”

“What?” Fumiko desperately covered her ears.

First of all, this reads like dialogue, not a book. You wouldn't write a script the way you would a story. There's so much repetition (not to mention the weird asides about body tensing, and ear covering that also feels false and distracting) that an already slow conversation feels even slower and more agonizing to read. Not to mention that apparently Fumiko is "totally unprepared" for the idea that the past can't be changed even though, like half a page later:

“Why?” Fumiko asked Kazu, her eyes begging for answers.

“Why? I’ll tell you why,” Kazu began. “Because there’s the rule.” There tends to be, in any movie or novel about time travel, some rule saying, Don’t go meddling in anything that is going to change the present. For example, going back and preventing your parents marrying or meeting would erase the circumstances of your birth and cause your present self to vanish.
This had been the standard state of affairs in most time-travel stories that Fumiko knew, so she believed in the rule: If you change the past, you do change the present.

So, Fumiko is aware that there's always rules about changes to the past and yet is totally unprepared for the idea that the past can't be changed? I mean, it's not the most annoying thing about the book. But here's another example, again, SAME CONVERSATION:

She wanted a convincing explanation for the existence of this unbelievable rule, that there is nothing you can do while in the past that will change the present. The only explanation Kazu would give was to say Because that’s the rule. Was she trying to tease her in a friendly way, by not telling her the reason? Or was it a difficult concept that she was unable to explain? Or perhaps she didn’t understand the reason either, as her casual expression seemed to suggest.

 We never find out!  Who knows! Leave a little mystery, I guess, because there's certainly nothing else worth reading on to find out. AND THE FUCKING CLANG-DONGS!! Every single time the door opens, we get a CLANG DONG. Here is a totally unedited two page spread from later in this SAME UNENDING CONVERSATION:

Fumiko 's attention returned to the cafe. Hirai seated herself opposite her at the table and proceeded to merrily explain the other rules. With her head and shoulders still sprawled on the table, Fumiko fixed her eyes on the sugar pot, wondering why the cafe didn't use sugar cubes, and quietly listened.

"It's not just those rules. There's only one seat that allows you to go back in time, okay? And, while in the past, you can't move from that seat," Hirai said. ''What else was there?" she asked Kazu, as she moved her count to her fifth finger.

"There's a time limit," Kazu said, keeping her eyes on the glass she was polishing. She mentioned it like an afterthought, as if she were merely talking to herself.

Fumiko raised her head in reaction to this news. "A time limit?"

Kazu showed a slight smile, and nodded.

Hirai gave the table a tap. "Frankly, after hearing just these rules, barely anyone still wants to return to the past," she said, apparently enjoying herself. And she was indeed taking great delight in observing Fumiko. "It's been a long time since we've seen a customer like you—someone totally set in your delusion of wanting to go back to the past."

"Hirai ... " Kazu said sternly.

"Life doesn't get served to you on a plate. Why don't you just give up?" Hirai blurted out. She looked ready to continue her tirade.

"Hirai ... " Kazu reneated. this time with a bit more emphasis.

"No. No, I think it's best to clearly put it out there, huh?"

Then Hirai guffawed loudly.

The words were all too much for Fumiko. Her strength had entirely drained from her body, and again she collapsed onto the table.

Then, from across the room ... "Can I have a refill, please?" said the man sitting at the table closest to the entrance with his travel magazine opened in front of him.

"Okay," Kazu called back.

CLANG-DONG

A woman had entered the cafe alone. She was wearing a beige cardigan over a pale aqua shirt-dress and crimson trainers, and carrying a white canvas bag. Her eyes were round and sparkling like a little girl 's.

"Hello." Kazu's voice rang through the cafe.

"Hi, Kazu."

"Sis! Hi there!"

Kazu called the woman sis, but actually she was Kazu's cousin's wife, Kei Tokita.

By the way, this is STILL not the end of the conversation with Fumiko about the rules about going back in time. And we get to hear them multiple times. Over and over and over, as they get explained to different people.  Grant me the patience to get through this "healing book" and the wisdom not to pick it up in the first place. The glacial pace and constant interjections and interruptions would make even the most interesting premise a rough read, and this is an extremely basic premise: you drink a cup of coffee, you go back in time to rehash a conversation. 

By the way, Fumiko's story is resolved because apparently her boyfriend tells her to wait for three more years and then he'll be back from the United States and they can pick up where they left off.  

 Seriously, that's how it ends. 

The other stories are about a woman whose husband has dementia and has forgotten they're married - after she goes back, she decides she's going to remind him about her instead of letting him think she's a stranger. One story is about a woman who goes back to talk with her estranged sister, who was in a fatal accident after leaving the cafe - she decides to go back and talk with her sister and later runs the family business as a "dying wish" kind of thing. And the last story is a woman who goes forward in time - Yes! Despite spending thirty pages on the rules about going back in time, never once is it mentioned until the last story that you can go forward as well! - to meet her child, since she fully expects to die after (if not before) she gives birth.

 The episodes themselves, Fumiko's aside, are all meant to be tear-jerkers too, but it's hard to feel anything except mild relief that after all the contortions people throw themselves into prior to going around in time, they've actually done it and gotten closure. 

Other things I found annoying:

We spend an inordinate amount of time reading about the fact that the cafe does not have air-conditioning but is never hot. This comes up multiple times.

There is a ghost woman sitting at a table. This is never explained beyond "she didn't finish her coffee fast enough." 

No one ever really addresses the fact that at one point, the daughter of the woman who dies giving birth comes back with futuristic tech to take a picture with her mother. 

A "key" plot point (in that there's any plot to speak of) hinges on the fact that somehow someone mixes up a date that is ten years away at 1500 hours with a date that is fifteen years away at 1000 hours. This is also unexplained beyond the following, which I swear I am not making up: "You planned to travel ten years into the future, but there was some kind of mistake and you traveled fifteen years. It seems ten years at 15 o’clock and fifteen years at 10 o’clock were mixed up. We heard about it when you returned from the future but right now, we are in Hokkaido for unavoidable reasons that I won’t go into because there’s no time.”

LOLOLOLOL. "We knew you had the wrong date and time and we had fifteen years to prepare for it but didn't and can't tell you why."

Well, I guess I am laughing now, remembering that. Maybe healing fiction does work!

23: A Book That Is Considered Healing Fiction