Lidia Yuknavitch - The Book of Joan

Здесь есть возможность читать онлайн «Lidia Yuknavitch - The Book of Joan» весь текст электронной книги совершенно бесплатно (целиком полную версию без сокращений). В некоторых случаях можно слушать аудио, скачать через торрент в формате fb2 и присутствует краткое содержание. Город: New York, Год выпуска: 2017, ISBN: 2017, Издательство: Harper, Жанр: sf_postapocalyptic, на английском языке. Описание произведения, (предисловие) а так же отзывы посетителей доступны на портале библиотеки ЛибКат.

The Book of Joan: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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The 25 Most Anticipated Books by Women for 2017,
Magazine The 32 Most Exciting Books Coming Out in 2017,
50 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2017,
Magazine 33 New Books to Read in 2017,
Most Anticipated, The Great 2017 Book Preview, The Millions The bestselling author of
offers a vision of our near-extinction and a heroine—a reimagined Joan of Arc—poised to save a world ravaged by war, violence, and greed, and forever change history, in this provocative new novel.
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.
Out of the ranks of the endless wars rises Jean de Men, a charismatic and bloodthirsty cult leader who turns CIEL into a quasi-corporate police state. A group of rebels unite to dismantle his iron rule—galvanized by the heroic song of Joan, a child-warrior who possesses a mysterious force that lives within her and communes with the earth. When de Men and his armies turn Joan into a martyr, the consequences are astonishing. And no one—not the rebels, Jean de Men, or even Joan herself—can foresee the way her story and unique gift will forge the destiny of an entire world for generations.
A riveting tale of destruction and love found in the direst of places—even at the extreme end of post-human experience—Lidia Yuknavitch’s
raises questions about what it means to be human, the fluidity of sex and gender, and the role of art as a means for survival.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srhheY5ISJ4

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Trinculo’s so-called trial was to happen in trompe l’oeil, its image appearing over and over again in holographic bursts. It would be broadcast in corridors and common rooms and walls in our CIEL quarters.

Christine had been granted a performance as part of the spectacle of Trinculo’s execution, though gaining permission did take some bribery of various guards and under-administrators. In the end Christine was able to convince them that she could provide a superior companion show for his death.

The silver spider swings and leaps in great arcs, drawing her attention to the performance space, which faces a cathedral-size window with a giant T-square covering it, the horizontal beam slightly higher than center. Beyond it, the horizonless ink of space and the dots of dead stars. How has she never seen it this way before? It is a goddam cross.

Her line of little rebels ready themselves feverishly. At that age, their cheeks seem to almost flush. But she knows she’s just wishing it. Their eyes yet blaze, though. They still have identifiable necks and cheekbones and scapulae. Lips not yet distorted or spidering around the edges. Her now-favorite, the girl with the epaulets, the girl—or she has decided it is a girl—with the aqua-hued skin, shoots orders at the others.

“Leave any thoughts of a future in this room. The future is…” Nyx risks a glance at Christine. “The future is dung. A compost heap masquerading as life, floating in space without reason or purpose. The old are the only endgame, and they reek of rot and pus.”

Christine’s lips curl up in a smile. There is no doubt that this young woman has been influenced by Trinculo. What an inspiring group of faux offspring they’ve made! Standing in their deep-hued silken robes, their white skin blazing through silk color, the troupe looks briefly to her like hope. A violent, alien, and homeless flock of creatures trapped between sexual development and arrest. It’s a wonder they don’t spontaneously combust.

If there had ever been a God, and Christine for one had never believed in one, then that God had perpetrated the most evil of jokes on the human race. He’d brought them to a kind of evolutionary climax, only to put the whole thing into reverse.

Now Jean de Men meddles with this sorry story of creation. And those relegated to CIEL bestow upon him such reverence and power that he nearly levitates with it. Under the guise of creating culture, he had set out to regulate and reinvent sexuality and everything that came with it, across the bodies of all women, and turn them into pure labor and materiality. What could be more biblical than that? All he needed was an apple and a goddamn snake.

Courage, Christine tells herself. To straighten her spine, she casts her mind through the wormhole of history, back to a parallel universe, from Joan’s trial, shortly before her execution:

Interrogative/Excerpt 221.4

Q: These are the citations of a heretic. You admit your heresy?

A: These… terms . Apostate. Heretic. Terrorist. Who owns the definitions? Language has no allegiance. No grand authority. We pose our authority arbitrarily upon it, but in the end, language is a free-floating system, like space junk or the sediments in oceans that eventually collect into rocks to form matter. What can be made can be unmade. Your definitions do not apply to anything in my experience. But to be precise, upon the topic of heresy, if by “heresy” you mean dissent or deviation from a dominant theory, opinion, or practice, then yes, I am a heretic. Your dominant theories, opinions, and practices disgust me. My aim was to murder them. But in truth I am no heretic at all, because it is your theories and practices that are heretical. Against the planet. Against the universe. Against being.

Q: You see? Impossible. The defendant insists upon pursuing insolence. Do you place so little value on your life? Your people?

A: One life is all we have, and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are, and to live without belief—that is a fate more terrible than dying.

Q: You move nearer every breath and word toward execution.

A: I am not afraid. I was born to do this.

Q: Insolence. You are not the child you once were. Your current circumstances are dire. We have no false mercy.

A: I was in my tenth year when the song in my head fully emerged and the light at my skull flickered alive to help govern my conduct. The first time, I was very much afraid. Then I was not. And never have been after.

Christine returns to the present tense with a vengeance. She turns from the vast and moronic cross to face her players. “Tonight we arrest the future by igniting the past.”

She puts her hands upon the shoulders of her best warrior. “Nyx,” she says, “I am glad to have known you, even if briefly.” She means it just as it sounds, as a deathkiss.

“To move violently and beautifully through skin, to enter matter—isn’t that evolution’s climax?” Nyx says triumphantly, smiling, nearly glowing, leaving Christine feeling something like the heartstab of a proud mother.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The entering entourage of power is ugly. High-up CIEL figures and assorted mechanical sentries. But Trinculo’s presence interrupts the ceremonial structure like a horse in a solemn parade unloading its shit in clumps.

“Fire what petty gelatinous wit you can muster, you fen-soaked death sacks,” Trinculo hisses, “I have no skin to harm.” His eyes gleam like succulent black holes. His body crouches, ready to spring… mythical creature.

“Gag and bind the troll,” Jean de Men orders, mocking Trinculo with a flip of his weighted wrist, dangling old white grafts like wrong doilies.

But her beloved’s voice—Trinculo’s—it is in her. His voice so rings Christine’s corpus that she feels she might faint. Every bone in her body vibrates with his language. And yet the image of Trinculo entering the theater plunges her doomward. From where she and her players are, they can easily see the procession: CIEL thugs lead Trinculo, the colossally arrogant Jean de Men follows, flesh dragging behind him in a bridal train. Christine holds her breath so as not to spit her entire mouthful of teeth at him.

But there is another.

A woman who appears to be unconscious or asleep is suspended midair on a kind of floating metal bed. She is not from CIEL. It is the woman with skin the color of someone who lives in weather. Or someone avoiding weather. On Earth. It reminds Christine of memories of the desert Southwest. The Earth woman’s head and shoulders, decorated with ornately designed tattoos in place of hair, seem warm amidst all the white. Her jaw squares up from the metal carrier. Now and then, Christine sees Trinculo steal glances at the woman. Who is she? Does Trinculo know her? Why is Jean de Men making a show of her?

Standing apart from them, the pearly beast Jean de Men smiles. Or at least the folds of his face arch upward.

“Some demigod,” Christine mutters under her breath.

As if Jean de Men can hear her, he turns to address Christine. “What is the title of your theatrical addition to our official proceedings?” He weaves his white whittled fingers in between each other.

The audience leans in her direction. A circle of milky figures, pallid and achromatic, their graft flabs hanging about them. Maybe one hundred, middle-aged, all shy of fifty but not by much.

A Brief History of the Heretic Maid , your… grace,” Christine responds, still managing to keep her teeth unclenched. “Or do you prefer ‘your eminence’?” De Men scowls. She thinks she hears the woman on the floating slab breathing. With difficulty.

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