Revolution: a sudden, complete or marked change in something.

This story represents turning points. It reflects the title in every way possible. While reading the book, the reader experiences both main characters difficulties instead of being told what they are. The objective the author intended was for the readers to experience the sadness, the pain, the heart-break and love, so that in the end, the meaning of revolution would hit us. Make us realise. For the best way to do this is to feel the hidden emotions.

Jennifer Donnelly incorporated historical information about the French Revolution. I learned facts about the Revolution and classical music that I didn’t know before. It opened the part of my mind that allowed me to really appreciate the difficulties of the middle Ages. My heart sank and my eyes swelled to the words reflecting on the death within the Paris borders. Reading the book, was like living alongside Alexandrine Paradis; turning every corner she did, walking with every step she took or speaking and acting out, every Shakespearean quote she spoke. I walked alongside Alexandrine. I experienced her life go from a mild struggle, to a crumbling disaster, only to come out in the end as a beautiful death; one of the heart.

Andi Alpers was a troubled teenager living with depression, with a loss and with regret. To read her words were breathless. This character lived pain, but never searched for the right ways out. She jumped from a dark New York, full of heart wrenching memories, to Paris; a city known for the love and beauty. Andi dove into the words of the 200 year old journal of Alexandrine Paradis. She knew of the French Revolution, and of the death, but what she was to read, she could have never guessed. The journal and trip to Paris was Andi’s turning point. Without Alexandrines words, she would have never seen the truth. A truth that possibly saved her life and let her restart a new one.

To read Revolution is to travel between the past and present, New York and Paris, dark and light, pain and happiness. It’s to experience that turning point. A turning point that makes you see different. The title of the story Revolution not only reflects on the human revolution, but also the one within the body and within the heart.

“It goes on, this world, stupid and brutal.
But I do not.
I do not.”

-Andi Alpers (page 472)