Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly

Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly

Completion Date: June 23, 2011

Reason for Reading: The Great Reading Swap of 2011 - Marg's List

BROOKLYN: Andi Alpers is on the edge. She’s angry at her father for leaving, angry at her mother for not being able to cope, and heartbroken by the loss of her younger brother, Truman. Rage and grief are destroying her. And she’s about to be expelled from Brooklyn Heights’ most prestigious private school when her father intervenes. Now Andi must accompany him to Paris for winter break.

PARIS: Alexandrine Paradis lived over two centuries ago. She dreamed of making her mark on the Paris stage, but a fateful encounter with a doomed prince of France cast her in a tragic role she didn’t want—and couldn’t escape.

Two girls, two centuries apart. One never knowing the other. But when Andi finds Alexandrine’s diary, she recognizes something in her words and is moved to the point of obsession. There’s comfort and distraction for Andi in the journal’s antique pages—until, on a midnight journey through the catacombs of Paris, Alexandrine’s words transcend paper and time, and the past becomes suddenly, terrifyingly present.

Jennifer Donnelly, author of the award-winning novel A Northern Light, artfully weaves two girls’ stories into one unforgettable account of life, loss, and enduring love. Revolution spans centuries and vividly depicts the eternal struggles of the human heart.

The Great Reading Swap is such a fun idea. It is too bad that I can't seem to get anything read of my lists! Even if I never finish the challenge, it would still be nice to read a few more of the books. I actually told Marg to include this because I wanted to buy it and I figured if I had to read it, that justified the purchase. I have read A Northern Light by Donnelly, but still haven't read her adult trilogy. I have had the first book on my TBR pile for years and it is also on my list from Marg. Right, so moving on to this book now.

I loved this book! Andi, a girl from the present time, stumbles across a diary hidden for generations unexpectedly. When she reads it she is connected with the life of Alexandrine Paradis and the struggles that she went through to save the life of a young prince. She was a very brave young woman. The little boy was the son of Marie Antoinette, and he loved fireworks. Alexandrine made sure that the entire time he was imprisoned, he saw them. She went to a lot of risk for a boy she only looked after for gain and not for any affection. She records everything in the diary that Andi finds and hopes that someone will find it and make a difference in the world when she is no longer able to.

Andi is having some troubles of her own. She is in Paris with her father. Her mother has admitted into a hospital because she is having a hard time dealing with the loss of her son. Then, her husband left and remarried. Andi has been looking after her mother and feeling guilty about the loss of her brother. She is on a path of self-destruction that her father thinks a change of scenery will cure. Her passion is music and she is expected to be working on her schools major paper that has a music connection. When she wants to go home and take care of her mother instead, her father says she can only if she finishes the outline. What happens is that her paper and Alexandrine's world connect in ways that Andi can never even possibly imagine.

One night Andi finds herself in the Catacombs with some friends. When the police arrive to break it up she becomes separated from the group and finds herself transported back in time to a very different Paris. Suddenly it is her that has to finish Alexandrine's work and take on all the dangers associated with that. Donnelly writes a wonderful blend of the history and the present. The characters come alive, the story in engaging, and who can complain about a book set in Paris. When Andi travels back in time it is done very believably and finishes the novel on an exciting note. In the beginning Andi was just reading about this girls adventures, but now she is living them. It made for great reading all around.

I am so happy that I read this book. I strongly recommend it and look forward to more from Donnelly in the future.

This book counts for the Great Reading Swap of 2011.

Cross-posted at The Written World.

The Wild Rose by Jennifer Donnelly

The Wild Rose is a part of the sweeping, multi-generational saga that began with The Tea Rose and continued with The Winter Rose. It is London, 1914. World War I looms on the horizon, women are fighting for the right to vote, and explorers are pushing the limits of endurance in the most forbidding corners of the earth. Into this volatile time, Jennifer Donnelly places her vivid and memorable characters:

•Willa Alden, a passionate mountain climber who lost her leg while summiting Kilimanjaro with Seamus Finnegan, and who will never forgive him for saving her life;

•Seamus Finnegan, a polar explorer who tries to forget Willa as he marries a beautiful young schoolteacher back home in England;

•Max von Brandt, a handsome German sophisticate who courts high society women, but has a secret agenda in wartime London.

Many other beloved characters from The Winter Rose continue their adventures in The Wild Rose as well. With myriad twists and turns, thrilling cliffhangers, and fabulous period detail and atmosphere, The Wild Rose provides a highly satisfying conclusion to an unforgettable trilogy.

Back in 2006 I read and adored the second book in the Rose trilogy by Jennifer Donnelly, The Winter Rose. Little did I imagine that it was going to be another five years before I finally go to read the conclusion to the trilogy. After all, at one stage there was a release date of May 2008 up at Amazon UK, and then it was changed to May 2009. When that date passed, I forced myself to only get excited when there was a definitely publishing date, and finally, finally that day has come.

The big danger of wanting a book so badly for a period of five years or more is that it will be very difficult for any book, no matter how much you like it, to live up to those expectations and that is what has happened with this book. While I liked it, it didn't quite live up to the label that I had given the book of the most anticipated release of 2011.

All the characters that we have come to know and love have returned in this final part of the Rose trilogy, along with some new ones. Fiona and Joe Bristow are back along with their children, especially their politically active daughter Katie. India and Sid drift in and out of the story particularly in the early part of the book (although I must say that for me Sid stole the scenes that he was in most of the time), but the main couple that is the focus of this particular episode of the saga are Seamie Finnegan and Willa Alden.

As individuals, Seamie and Willa are both somewhat daredevil. Seamie has been on polar expeditions and returned to London with great public acclaim, Willa lives an isolated life in the shadows of Mt Everest trying to put her life back together after the closing events that were covered in The Winter Rose. Seamie and Willa share a great passion for adventure, and for each other, but it seems that circumstances are destined to keep them apart.

If you are to take only one thing from this review, it should probably be that Jennifer Donnelly loves to absolutely torture her characters whether it be physically or emotionally and that is definitely true in this book. There are traitors and spies, betrayal, infidelity, physical danger, political and social upheaval, not to mention the involvement of characters in World War I.

One thing that Donnelly does do well is to involve many of the foremost figures of the day. Through the family's various connections the reader gets to "meet" characters such as Ernest Shackleton, Lawrence of Arabia, sometimes in overly coincidental situations, and be involved in events and issues like the suffragette movement.

I was going to try and do some kind of plot summary, but I am not sure that I could do it justice - there is just so much going on. Beyond that busyness of the plot though, the biggest flaw with this book is actually the two main characters. I struggled with Seamie and Willa, both with the twists and turns of their relationship, and also with them as individuals. Willa spends a lot of time in a drug induced haze, mostly to deal with managing pain due to losing a leg (I guess it isn't a spoiler if it is in the book description right?), and Seamie is meant to be the returning adventure hero, but many of his actions were far from heroic.

I do have to make a comment about the cover of this book. The thing that initially attracted me to The Tea Rose was the gorgeous cover, and that was true of The Winter Rose as well. This cover does not sit all that well against those two. I am not saying it isn't an attractive cover but if it is meant to represent Willa it doesn't do it for me, and it is just kind of generic to me. Of course, there might be plenty of people out there who disagree with me on that, and that's fine!

I am glad that we are no longer waiting for this book to come out. I assume though that means that we have quite a wait for the next Jennifer Donnelly book. Whilst this book didn't quite meet my unrealistically high expectations (particularly against my memories of The Winter Rose), it is still a fun, juicy saga of the best kind, and I can't wait to see what she bring us next.

Rating 4/5

Crossposted at Adventures of an Intrepid Reader

The Winter Rose by Jennifer Donnelly

When India Selwyn Jones, a young woman from a noble family, graduates from the London School of Medicine for Women in 1900, her professors advise her to set up her practice in London’s esteemed Harley Street. Driven and idealistic, India chooses to work in the city’s East End instead, serving the desperately poor.

In these grim streets, India meets—and saves the life of London’s most notorious gangster, Sid Malone. A hard, wounded man, Malone is the opposite of India’s aristocratic fiancé, Freddie Lytton, a rising star in the House of Commons.Though Malone represents all she despises, India finds herself unwillingly drawn ever closer to him, intrigued by his hidden, mysterious past.

Though they fight hard against their feelings, India and Sid fall in love, and their unpredictable, passionate and bittersweet affair causes destruction they could never have imagined. Sweeping from London to Kenya to the wild, remote coast of California, The Winter Rose is a breathtaking return to the epic historical novel, from a masterful writer with a fresh, richly vivid, and utterly electrifying voice.

Wow! I just finished reading this book and I have to say I enjoyed it even more than The Tea Rose. Donnelly once again takes us on a roller coaster of emotions by making us familiar once more with the misery of London's poverty and the difficulty of doing something to change that reality. In India and Sid she brings us two characters bent on changing that and have to go through terrible times because of that wish and their love.

I really liked them! India for her sheer determination in wanting to do something good and Sid for despite living the life he led he still maintained a kind heart and helped how he could the ones who had nothing. It's interesting to see how they are brought together when in the beginning it seems that they have nothing in common and how they have to fight the obstacles in their way. India first saves Sid's life and ends up asking him for help in obtaining birth control devices for her patients while he admires her will to help the poor and wants to repay her for saving his life. Once again Donnelly's descriptions almost convinced me I was there with her characters, besides her wonderful portrayal of people and places (besides London the story takes us to Africa) I really enjoyed knowing more about the medical procedures in the beginning of the XX century and how difficult it was for women to start practising and be respected as competent professionals.

She also does a very good job with the villains! More than in The Tea Rose, where the bad guys were mostly absent and the action went forward due to coincidences or the natural evolution of the situations the characters were in, here the bad guys play an important role on how the main characters live their lives. And she wrote them so well that for a while I was more worried with the bad guys having their comeuppance than I was with India and Sid having a happy ending!

It was really nice to revisit the Bristows and Seamie Finnegan (I wonder if the next book is about him).

Grade: A

The Tea Rose - Jennifer Donnelly

I was lent this one by A. and I must say I have no idea why it took me so long to start it. I loved it!

East London, 1888 - a city apart. A place of shadow and light where thieves, whores and dreamers mingle, where children play in the cobbled streets by day and a killer stalks at night. Where shining hopes meet the darkest truths.

Here, by the whispering waters of the Thames, a bright, defiant young woman dares to dream of a life beyond tumbledown wharves, gaslit alleys, and the grim and crumbling dwellings of the poor.

Fiona Finnegan, a worker in a tea factory, hopes to own a shop one day, together with her lifelong love, Joe Bristow, a costermonger's son. With nothing but their faith in each other to spur them on, Fiona and Joe struggle, save and sacrifice to achieve their dreams.

But Fiona's plans are shattered when the actions of a dark and brutal man force her to flee London for New York. There, her indomitable spirit – and the ghosts of her past – propel her rise from a modest West Side shop front to the top of Manhattan's tea trade.

Fiona's old ghosts do not rest quietly, however, and to silence them, she must venture back to the London of her childhood, where a deadly confrontation with her past becomes the key to her future.

The Tea Rose is a towering old-fashioned story, imbued with a modern sensibility, of a family's destruction, of murder and revenge, of love lost and won again, and of one determined woman's quest to survive and triumph.

Authentic and moving, The Tea Rose is an unforgettable novel – one certain to take its place beside such enduring epics as A Woman of Substance, The Thornbirds, and
The Shell Seekers.

I think one of my favourite things in the novel was how Connelly makes her story come alive, I can almost see the streets of London and New York, smell the fruit and vegetables at the market and shiver with anticipation while Jack the Ripper strolls the streets of Whitechapel.

Then I really enjoyed her detailed characters. The story's main characters are young Fiona Finnegan and her boyfriend Joe Bristow. We really feel we know Fiona and her family. We feel their joys and their sorrows. Fiona and Joe are saving money to start their own business but unfortunately things don't happen as they would like. Fiona's family is shattered by several tragedies amidst the union workers fight for better pay and unsolved murders of prostitutes in the neighbourhood. And Joe finds that a reckless action can change a life.

Separated by an ocean Fiona will raise from adversity proving herself to be a strong, determined and enterprising woman whose business skills will lead her to build and empire. But she doesn't forget the past and how she vowed to make the culprits of her family's misfortune pay nor the young man she loved so much. In the end they are both survivors!

There's an unexpected twist in the end in preparation for the next book and now I can't wait to get my hands on The Winter Rose.

Grade: A