By Jordan Sunkel
Round Table editor
Nearly every country in the Western world has gone through a revolution. Some have been short, some long and some just completely disastrous. While countries have revolutions, so do individuals as they struggle to survive hard times and gain control of who they are.
Andi Alpers is struggling through a personal uprising in Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly. She is caught in the grief of losing her brother, hatred for her father who’s never around and self-loathing for letting Truman die.
The overwhelming emotions she feels causes her to lose focus in school, and nearly get expelled from her private school, which demands a senior thesis to graduate.
The only thing that can take Andi away from her grief and rage is music. It’s the only thing she cares for anymore, and what she’s chosen to do her senior thesis on.
When her father learns of her failures in school, he shows up, puts her mother in a mental hospital and forces Andi to travel with him to Paris for winter break. While there, she stumbles upon the diary of Alexandrine Paradis, a young woman in the time of the French Revolution.
Alexandrine is a street performer, who one day made the young dauphin prince of France laugh after his brother died. This simple action caused Alexandrine to move up from being a simple, poor actress to the prince’s playmate, a role that is becoming more dangerous as time goes on.
As Andi continues to read the diary, she becomes more and more enraptured, caught in the words and actions of Alexandrine. She starts experiencing Alexandrine’s world, until one day after a late adventure, the two worlds become one.
Donnelly created a work of historical fiction that is perfectly meshed together. Personally, I don’t like historical fiction, they can be dry and uninteresting, but the way Donnelly wrote Revolution in both time periods caused an interesting reading experience.
The book is also quite long, which I am a fan of, to a certain extent. When I reached the second part of the book, initially I was upset because it seemed like the book went on forever, but upon further reading, it was needed for the story as a whole.
The emotions felt throughout the book are intense, for both girls. They both face extremely tough situations that are highly emotive experiences. As I read, the emotions were clear and strong, forcing the reader to feel them.
Revolution also has me more interested in learning about the French Revolution. Naturally through history classes I know some facts, but from this book I want to know more.
Through Alexandrine’s world, and words, Alex learns to cope through her struggles. “Life’s all about the revolution, isn’t it? The one inside, I mean.”
