I first read Ellie Valsin's Virago at age fifteen, right after it came out. I was new to Les Misérables as a piece of foundational media - I had just seen the musical for the first time a few months prior, and I was unclear about much of the storyline. In fact, the only reason Enjolras caught my eye is because he was played by an older boy who was in my choir class that I had a crush on in the local musical I'd seen.

Now, nearly nine years later, I revisited the book alongside reading Les Misérables. Naturally that gave me way more sociopolitical context for Virago, and I understood it much better. But to my surprise, I realized also the way what I did understand at fifteen greatly impacted my thinking, politically and personally.

Enjolras, a woman disguised as a man who feels she is genderless, was a fantastic role model for a teen who was just beginning to distangle his own gender and sexuality. Her fierce radically left politics, tempered by Combeferre's dogged insistence on the good of humanity and the power of kindness, were also revolutionary to me. Rereading one passage about Combeferre's morality, his desire to be a pacifist with his recognition that violence is sometimes the only opition - I felt seen by that now when I felt it alien and confusing at fifteen.

This is an intimately important book to me, and I will probably read it again in the future. It's easier to understand if you read the original source material, the book version of Les Misérables, but it can be understood without that context (I do recommend at least listening to the musical first, though). My greatest lament about it is that it's only available on Kindle.