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    The Maid
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    The Maid
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    The Maid
    Ebook364 pages4 hours

    The Maid

    By Kimberly Cutter

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    It is the early part of the fifteenth century and the Hundred Years War rages on. The French city of Orleans is under siege, English soldiers tear through the countryside wreaking destruction on 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 Domremy, a twelve-year-old peasant girl, Jehanne, hears a voice that will change her life - and the course of European history.

    The tale of Jehanne d'Arc, the saint and warrior who believed she had been chosen by God to save France, and who led an army of 10,000 soldiers against the English, 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 her violent father and a forced marriage, who taught herself to ride, and fight, and lead, and who somehow found the courage and tenacity to convince first one, then two, then tens, then thousands to follow her, is at once thrilling, unexpected and heart-breaking.

    Sweeping, gripping and rich with intrigue, betrayal, love and valour, The Maid is an unforgettable novel about the power and burden of faith, and the exhilarating and devastating consequences of fame.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateMay 3, 2011
    ISBN9781408808122
    Unavailable
    The Maid
    Author

    Kimberly Cutter

    Kimberly Cutter is the author of The Maid. She was the West Coast Editor for W Magazine for four years, and has written for W, Harper's Bazaar, Vanity Fair and Marie Claire, where she is currently a Contributing Editor. She received her MFA from the University of Virginia. Kimberly Cutter lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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    Reviews for The Maid

    3.5/5

    12 ratings11 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Many reviewers did not like aspects of the author's writing style, but l liked the quick pace and the short chapters. The author had access to a lot of research and the book could have become bogged down with historical detail and background, instead I get the sense of being in Jehane's head, seeing and feeling what she did, understanding how everyone and everything looked to her.

      I really enjoyed this book and I feel it was a perfect "intro" to a complex historical figure/time/event.
    • 2/5
       meh. I can't decide what to think of this. Maybe it suffered in comparison with the Mark Twain version of the same story, where Joan is put on a pedestal and transmuted into a goddess. Here Joan is a lot more human, she's fallible, but also she's not always very nice.

      Took a while for me to work out who the narrator was. I think it was Joan herself, talking to a chronicler in retrospect. But it got a bit confuding, with some events being described almost as they happened with asides that were clearly written from a position of later information. Took a while to get used to the style.

      The voices Joan hears are presented very differently than in the Twain version. It does also raise the possibility that she went further than her voices were prompting her to, in that the later stages of the campaign were less successful - was that due to personal ambition rather than divine intervention.

      I can't say I'd bother reading this again. Not that it was bad, just that it didn;t grab me in any particular way.
    • 3/5
      A bit uneven, but a perfectly readable and enjoyable fictionalized treatment of Joan of Arc's life. I think a good historical fiction piece ought to send you scurrying to Google things now and then to find out a bit more about them, and this certainly accomplished that.
    • 3/5
      Sheds some new light on the subject of Joan of Arc. It is a speedy read and the editing is perfect. I would recommend this book.
    • 2/5
      The Maid is all opaque, earnest intensity. It marches onward without much modulation or nuance, with imagined internal and external dialogues aligning with the historical record. That a 17 year old peasant girl ended up victoriously leading the army of 15th century France, however, is fabulously miraculous. That this book fails to breathe much life into such a potent story may be a reflection of how powerful source material may overwhelm a retelling. Another reason why I may have found The Maid so prosaic though, relates to Cutter's handling of Joan's visions: they are essentially memos from God. However one might explain them, without somehow communicating how revelatory her visions were, Joan of Arc's story never really takes off.
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this historical re-telling of Joan of Arc's campaign against the English in 15th century France. Whilst sticking to what we actually know about Joan - or Jehanne - Cutter weaves a compelling tale of the peasant girl stricken with religious conviction. The depiction of religious experience is especially good - a combination of extreme joy and pain as she is caught up in vision glorious, yet has to return to ordinary life:"She doesn't know how long it lasted. It felt like a long time, but she doesn't know. What she does know is that afterward, when the voice and light were gone, it was terrible. All the world gray and cold, like a tomb. Gray trees, gray sky, black sun. Black leaves scuttling down the hillside. Everything cold, shrivelled, bereft. She lay curled on the ground, sobbing. 'Come back, please. Come back.' Wanting nothing but to die, sleep. Return."Throughout her mission, Jehanne is hurled from ecstasy to despair. Sometimes her voices are there to comfort and call her 'darling', sometimes they are silent. It is a compelling story (more books have been written about her than about any other woman in history), and Cutter writes so well that 'knowing how it will end' is irrelevant. We see Jehanne's faith, and understand that her passion and drive make her death inevitable. When her voices tell her that she will be dead in a year and she collapses in grief, we weep with her for the unfairness of it all. Near the end, recovering from a wound and living in Charles' court, she realises that war has become what she is for:"And she understood the strange beauty of war then, the way it brings the world to life for its participants, makes each moment shimmer simply because it exists, makes each blade of grass a marvel, makes the humblest gruel seem a delicacy, the trip of a squirrel up a tree trunk an adventure, a thing of wonder. And she saw then that she missed the war, that she'd felt at home in it, among the filthy soldiers and the horses and the fires and the trees, in a way she'd never felt anywhere else."Joan's story moves us because it is the story of youth, full of hope and faith, crushed by the relentless pressure of the quotidian, the regular, the ordinary. Fear destroying the extraordinary. The bibliography shows how meticulously it has been reserached - not just historical sources, but Teresa d'Avila and William James, Shaw and works on mental illness. Whatever you've ever thought about Joan of Arc, about faith or sainthood, it will be changed and enriched by this book.
    • 3/5
      I really, really wanted to like this book; as a fan of historical fiction, Joan of Arc is a personage of whom I have not read much. However, there was too much "telling" instead of "showing" in this novel, and I couldn't even finish it. Once Joan reached the king's city, things started happening without any particular reason.
    • 4/5
      he Maid is the epic retelling of Jehanne de Arc’s life. Her story starts in Domremy. As a girl, she lives with her parents and brothers and sister in a house with fine leaded windows. When her sister is found dead at the hands of English marauders, life changes for Jehanne. Her father takes his rage out on Jehanne and tries to arrange a marriage for her. Jehanne, however has different plans. She sees three heavenly beings, and they tell her to leave Domremy and travel to the Dauphin. She is told to liberate France and lead the Dauphin to Reims to crown him as King of France. She leaves Domremy, and soon gains a following. The rest, as they say, is history.Kimberly Cutter uses facts to bring Jehanne de Arc to life. Jehanne’s early life shapes her life and lends her strength to carry out her mission. Jehanne is a real life character, complete with flaws. Cutter presents her as the truthful prophetess and warrior, with her visions being the driving force behind her life. There are times when the reader wants to reach into the book and assist Jehanne. The story almost seems impossible and improbable. But, the Maid of Lorraine did in fact become the rallying cry of France. There were times when the writing got heavy. If you are looking for a book that argues for or against the validity of Jehanne’s visions, this isn’t the book for you. If you want to find out who Jehanne really was, read this book. While I am not convinced that Jehanne was a divine messenger, Cutter’s book is a fascinating journey from peasant farm girl to France’s divine warrior.
    • 3/5
      Interesting account of Joan of Arc. I enjoyed the historical setting and the overall story; however, I felt that the writing was uneven and there seemed to be some inconsistencies in the character.
    • 4/5
      Thoroughly enjoyed this historical novel about Joan of Arc...
    • 4/5
      It took me a while to get into this book, but once the blood and guts started (second half of the book) it was great. No it wasn't that graphic, but the battles just got me excited! A major part of this book is dedicated to Jehanne's beginnings in Domremy (sorry I don't have fancy accents in this computer). I think the author tried to play it both ways, Jehanne had her visions but also was a "PR" product of the Daulphin and his people. No, there's nothing wrong with that, it's probably the most accurate, I just felt conflicted. The battle portions and Jehanne's are brief, but I truly liked this part the most. At this point the plot moves along very quickly and you find yourself at Jehanee's trial.There were parts where I wished this book was told in Jehanne's POV as opposed to third person, so I could know more what motivated her, she surprised me sometimes and not always in a good way. She did behave a bit petulant when she wouldn't get her way (get Charles, the king, to send her to war) and then I understood how desperate she was to complete her mission. Jeahnee really was a roller coaster.Some of the dialogue felt too contemporary, and the structure is just odd, the chapters are so short that I really did wonder why bother? I also felt the book asked to much of me, knowledge of the Hundred Years War, France etc, given the book is written in third person POV I feel like details could have been given. However, this can go both ways, people who don't really want to read details (there's always the history books and google thank the gods) may find this just fine.