Saving Francesca (2006)

saving francesca
melina marchetta

read: january 2010

recommendation: read. read read read.

Wow. Melina Marchetta blows my socks off yet again.

Frankie/Frank/Francesca is a year 11 in Sydney. She has switched schools because her former school stopped at year 10. And Frankie's mother, Mia, decides to send her to St. Sebastian's, where there are approximately 30 girls and a couple thousand boys.

As Frankie says, "You'd think this would be great, but it's not."

Oh, FRANKIE. Oh, Will and Luca and Robert and Justine and Tara and Sibhoan and Thomas and Jimmy and Nonno's and Nonna's . . .

Mia, Frankie's mother, has always been doing ten things at once. She's a personality, a force to be reckoned with. Until one day, the music doesn't go off at 6:45 am, and Mia doesn't get out of bed.

This is beautiful, brilliant, look at family and high school, also carefully dealing with issues of depression and blame and medication, etc.

Being your own person - not as a latch-key kid with responsibilities, but having your own personality and likes and expressions and having friends who like you for who you are and what you want to be - this book deals with that. This book is about the family you are born with and the family you choose, and what it means to love someone.

The prose is tight and beautiful. The slang and the words and the characters hold on to you, and bring you there, and show you the world from a different perspective.

I am so HAPPY to have this book, not just for me, but also for the possibility to give to kids who have parents or other loved ones who are depressed.

Marchetta is such an amazing author. But oh, I think this is my favorite out of all of them. I cannot recommend it enough.