(More on this under the Discussion Section.)Īndi’s father takes her to Paris with him, and insists she use her time to research her thesis. This song, this title, this sequence, becomes a theme in the book. But Andi’s music teacher tells her that knowing pain is not enough she must play with more feeling, and he advises her to listen to the famous four-note-long guitar phrase in Pink Floyd’s “Shine On You Crazy Diamond.” This signature arpeggio, her teacher says, “sounds exactly how sadness feels.” She half-heartedly works on her senior thesis regarding a mysterious 18th century musician, Amade Malherbeau, famous for his Fireworks Concerto. And its strength holds you together when nothing else can.” The only thing that keeps her going, and that she still believes in, is music: Andi herself struggles from flunking out and from not committing suicide. For just a few seconds, I’m not alone.” Not only has Andi suffered the loss of her beloved brother, but her father, a Nobel-prize winning geneticist, has left, and her mother has had a psychotic breakdown. She is cruel to her friends because “for just a few seconds, someone else hurts, too. Simultaneously it is the story of Alexandrine Paradis, also seventeen, who desperately tries, but fails, to prevent the murder of her young charge, Louis-Charles, who is the son of the King Louis XVI and Queen Marie-Antoinette.Īt the story’s onset, Andi is all about pain. Revolution tells the story of high school senior Andi Alpers, who blames herself for the death of her younger brother Truman, a sweet boy they all adored who told his family that love was the key to the universe. Also in both, parallel circumstances in the older writing helps the protagonist solve her current emotional problems. In both, the heroine’s voice alternates with the writer of the letters and diary. Similarly, in Revolution, the protagonist Andi finds an old diary and solves a mystery as well. In A Northern Light, the protagonist, Mattie, comes into some old letters and through reading them, helps solve a mystery. It took place in 1906, however, so this book, which starts out in contemporary times and alternates with action taking place in the 18th Century, sounds very different. When I read A Northern Light by Donnelly, I fell in love with it.

Revolution book jennifer donnelly