Review: Revolutions

[Nicole Priester]

 

Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly, is a book with two seperate plots. The first plot is about a young girl named Andi who is struggling to deal with her brothers death that took place two years ago. She has not dealt with all the issues and the most important is blame. She also has to deal with her parents spliting up and the issues her mother has since her brother's death. She has two things that keep her strong. Her music and her medicine that she abuses. Eventually her father tries to step in and correct the situation right around winter break. He checks her mother into a hospital and takes Andi to Paris, France while he is there doing research on DNA. The DNA that he is doing research on is the lost Prince of France Louis-Charles. His father is trying to determine if they have Louis-Charles heart. His father is doing this for his friend G who is absolutely obsessed with the French Revolution and aims to open up a museum dedicated solely to it. There are loads of artifacts from the era including a guitar in which G lets Andi play. The case for the Guitar is very interesting to Andi, there is a lock that there is no key for. One day she decided to try a key (A very important key to her and that was found in The U.S at a Flee market by her brother) that she wears around her neck every day that works in opening it. In the case she finds a picture that at first she mistakes at her brother, but is really Louis-Charles and a journal that belongs to Alexandrine Paradis who was an attendant to the prince before he was imprisioned in a dark murky tower to die. Enter Plot #2. Andi gets completely intralled by this journal and feels so connected to Alex and the pain that Alex feels. Along the way many other adventures come to light. There is love, fear, suicide, and much more.

B. I definately feel that this book fits into the YA Lit Critera. The parents or Adults are not all the present. There are there and a represented well, but are represented as your typical upper east side parents you would see on Gossip Girl where they are truely absent most of the time and come in and out of their childrens lives. The point of view comes from 2 YA (Andi and Alex) We get into their minds; Andi through out the entire story and Alex through her Journal. There are several goals or accomplishments that Andi and Alex are both trying to achieve and which they do one their own. There are a lot of different issues brought up; love, sex, fear, death, suicide, abandonment and much more. There are also a lot of twist and turns and surprises. Just when you think you know what is going on, you are probably going to be wrong.

http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20101107/CURR04/31107999... an interview with Donnelly about the text and what it meant to her to write it.

I really liked this book a lot. I was a little annoyed when I found it because of the length and all the stuff that I had going on at the time. However, this book was truely a pretty quick read. I grew so interested and invested in the story, that I was up till very late hours reading it. This book has a lot of value to it. I think that this book would be good for Juniors or Seniors, however, at least in my high school world lit took place in 10th Grade. This book would go very good with learning about the French Revolution, because there is a lot of research done about the revolution and people of the time not just the royals. The way that Donnelly brings this history to life is absolutely amazing.