The Book of the Maidservant

by Rebecca Barnhouse

Book Overview

A funny and wise book about friendship, loyalty, and love.--Karen Cushman Johanna is a servant girl to Dame Margery Kempe, a renowned medieval holy woman. Dame Margery feels the suffering the Virgin... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375858563
• ISBN13: 9780375858567
• Release Date: October 2009
• Publisher: Random House Books for Young Readers
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 4.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.8" x 8.4"
• Age Range: 10 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 5 and higher

Customer Reviews

The Book of the Maidservant

In her debut novel //The Book Of The Maidservant//, medieval historian Rebecca Barnhouse brings us the well-crafted story of a young girl of fifteenth-century medieval Europe. Dame Margery Kempe was an actual person, a renowned holy woman of great piety who made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and wrote about it in the first English autobiography. Johanna, the Maidservant of the tale, is a young girl who has "entered service" after her father loses the family farm. She is loosely based on the historical character of Dame Margery's personal servant. Dame Margery may be a person of great piety, but she has little patience and is vastly critical of all about her. Johanna is far removed from the "perfect servant" when the story begins, but we watch her mature from a petulant, lazy, ungrateful, poorly trained, unbearably self-centered wretch to a young woman of grace through trial, hardship, sacrifice and drudgery. Author Barnhouse's considerable talent places us right in the midst of the sights and sounds and smells of medieval Europe with immediacy and verisimilitude. She enables us to experience the long trek from England to Rome with all the exaltation the original travelers must have felt -- and all the weariness, fear, hunger, pain, thirst, and deprivation as well. We can only hope Ms. Barnhouse discovers more historical characters worthy of her talent. Reviewed by Claudette Smith

Not Just For Children

The Book of the Maidservant is a wonderful example of making academic research accessible to any readers interested in medieval life. Don't be put off by the "Young Adult" tag; this novel would be a perfect addition to undergraduate courses in medieval literature, and makes a perfect companion to the original work of Dame Margery. Funny and warm, this is an appealing rendition of the "voiceless" whose lives were too often short, sharp and brutish. Johanna is a wonderful creation.

A saga of hardship, adaptation, survival, inspiration, and ultimately the journey to redemption

Read by Rebecca Barnhouse (with an additional note read by the author), The Book of the Maidservant is the unabridged audiobook adaptation of the debut novel of medieval literature expert Rebecca Barnhouse. Inspired by the fifteenth-century text "The Book of Margery Kempe" (which happens to be the first known autobiography written in English), The Book of the Maidservant follows Johanna, a serving girl in attendance to medieval holy woman Dame Margery Kempe. Though Dame Margery Kempe feels the pain of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary, she is all but blind to the suffering around her. When Dame Margery Kempe embarks on a pilgrimage to Rome, the difficulties truly begin, culminating in a bitter fight that causes Dame Margery Kempe to abandon her own servants. A stranger in the strange land of Rome, Johanna must find her own path. A saga of hardship, adaptation, survival, inspiration, and ultimately the journey to redemption, The Book of the Maidservant is enthusiastically recommended. 6 CDs, 6 hours 45 minutes.