In honor of the recent 2011 BEA (
BookExpo America) conference, I'd like to showcase this year's Indies Choice Award winners. This annual indie honorific is closely tied to the previous year's
Next Lists (i.e., each 2011 Book of the Year nominee is pulled from a 2010 Next List). All titles are exclusively selected, both initially and in the final voting stage, by ABA member booksellers. The Indies Choice Awards are unique in their celebration of both distinguished books in the independent community, and its organizations, including ABA and IndieBound.
Access this
BTW (Bookselling This Week) article to view the four winning titles in each category (Adult Fiction, Adult Nonfiction, Adult Debut, and Young Adult). You can also read some of the award-winning authors' comments from the BEA Celebration of Bookselling & Author Awards Luncheon
here.
I was particularly delighted to see Jennifer Donnelly's
Revolution receive the Young Adult award. This is a seamlessly constructed novel, expertly researched and wonderfully human. Fusing both contemporary and historical fiction, Donnelly presents two heroines: Andi, the novel's protagonist, a musically gifted, brilliant and hurting Brooklynite, and Alex, a resilient daughter of the French Revolution. Suffering under the weight of her younger brother Truman's death, her mother's subsequent instability, and her father's distance, Andi is in danger of failing her senior year at St. Anselm's, an elite private school in New York. Against her will, she accompanies her father, a renowned geneticist, to Paris, where she writes her senior thesis as he conducts research on the alleged heart of Louis-Charles, Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI's wretched son.
While in France, Andi discovers Alex's diary, a treasure the reader is privileged to peruse with her. Embedded in Andi's first person narration, Alex's story of dedication to the young Louis proves her an equally riveting protagonist in her own story. Also, despite the temporal separation between Andi and Alex, their coming-of-age emotions connect gracefully, for Donnelly establishes the parallel between Andi's mourning of Truman and Alex's compassion for Louis-Charles in a straightforward yet unforced manner.
From its beginning chapters,
Revolution is unflinching its portrayal of difficult subjects such as suicide, depression, and--in Alex's world--mass human suffering. In essence, this is a novel of stunning emotional scope. Reading this intensely human book, I could only imagine what a feat it must have been to compose. Two genres, two primary characters, two writing styles. A deep knowledge of music and an immense amount of research into the French Revolution. And, above all, a candid, questioning, and compassionate look at suffering, cruelty, loss, love.
To learn more about the writer who accomplished all this one novel, check out
Jennifer Donnelly's website. Here you'll find wonderful writing advice, insight into
Revolution's genesis, and even Andi's playlist.