My Own Revolution (review)

Patrik Chrobak and his friends Danika, Emil, and Karel, thirteen-year-olds in 1960s Czechoslovakia, are united by their liberal-minded parents and their penchant for pulling anti-government pranks. The boys’ minor acts of vandalism wouldn’t amount to much in another time or place, but in the repressive climate, the pranks land Patrik squarely on the radar of the school principal. As he takes his punishments and plans his next stunts, his father, a psychiatrist, is under pressure at work to turn in false diagnoses that would lead to the demotion, or even asylum commitment, of political troublemakers. The situation escalates when Danika falls for a new student whose family has strong Communist party ties, igniting Patrik’s jealousy. Patrik, in turn, takes greater risks to prove his bravery and regain Danika’s attention; when he sets fire to a pro-government flag during a parade, he is told he must leave school and apprentice as a miner at the end of the term. The Chrobaks are now desperate enough to attempt escape through Yugoslavia and across the sea to Italy, even though they realize they will lose all their belongings and professional status, and they know they are being watched by pro-government neighbors and “friends.” Marsden’s prose is a bit choppy and it’s sometimes inconsistent in its reading level, but her depiction of Patrik, whose hot-headed, heedless actions put his family in the line of danger, will strike a familiar note with young adolescents. Positioned somewhere between the arty sophistication of Peter Sís’ autobiographical The Wall (BCCB 10/07) and the accessibility of Eugene Yelchin’s Breaking Stalin’s Nose (BCCB 11/11), this novel will offer historical fiction readers an entree into the politics of repression and resistance in Cold War eastern Europe.