Center for Teaching & Learning

“Yeah. Sure. My brother’s dead. My mother’s insane. Hey, let’s have a crêpe.”
Andi Alpers is just a seventeen-year-old girl living in the heights of Brooklyn. She plays guitar; and has a talented French artist for a mother and a brilliant scientist for a father. Sounds perfect, "ja?" — as her teacher Nathan would say. Not so much. Andi’s younger brother, Truman, was killed in a car accident, her father lives with his new young wife, and most of the time Andi’s mother catatonically paints pictures of Truman, which leaves Andi on her own. But after Andi attempts suicide at a party, she finds her father at her house trying to make sense of her mother who sits dazed at her easel, and wondering why Andi wasn't there. Abruptly, he suggests that he and Andi go to Paris, so that Andi can work on her college essay and try to move on from Truman’s death.
When Andi arrives in Paris she finds an artifact she never expected to spark her curiosity: a diary. It belonged to a poor girl Andi’s age named Alex, living in the time of the French Revolution. As Andi continues to read the diary, the world of eighteenth-century Paris captures her in a way more real than she could ever imagine.
I loved how Donnelly incorporated so many different personalities in both Andi and Alex’s stories. Even the characters in Alex’s diary entries Donnelly made both Andi and the reader feel like the people described were real. The three characters that I loved the most in Revolution were Amadé Malherbeau, Virgil, and Prince Louis-Charles. I loved those characters because they all helped Andi discover who she was —I know it sounds cheesy, but trust me— in different powerful ways: Louis-Charles shows Andi the innocence of the monarchy in the French Revolution, Amadé shows her how the revolution affected the people and how not everyone is as good as they seem, and Virgil teaches her that she needs to open up and let people into her life. I think all of these lessons are important in anyone’s life, regardless of the French Revolution setting.
I thought it was interesting and effective how Donnelly constructed the novel using specific entries from Alex’s diary to describe her life, so that both Andi and the reader can get know her and deeply understand the struggles of her life. I also thought Donnelly’s use of an epilogue to end the book was effective and satisfying.
I think all readers will absolutely love this book—I definitely did. I rated it a definite eleven out of ten. It’s the perfect size for this type of novel—about 470 pages— but I promise you, it will go by fast. PLEASE: do not be swayed from reading this spectacular book by the cover image of a key. I think it distracts from the theme and plot of the book, which is about people and things changing, and only a bit about Andi and Alex’s connection to Truman’s key.
Be prepared with some tissues; this book is an emotional ride.
Hope Random House, Inc. 473 pages.