Saving Francesca

I cannot get enough of Melina Marchetta. Fantastic!

Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Allow me the indulgence of just one line, if you will..."I'm not having this discussion. Thomas Mackee is the last bastion of arrested development and hormonal retardation." Are you kidding me Melina Marchetta? That might be one of the funniest lines I've read in very long time. And it's little gems like this one that I find so absolutely delightful about Marchetta's writing. I imagine that in real life Ms. Marchetta is very very funny.

So anyway, Francesca is faced with a very difficult time when year eleven rolls around (Australia's junior year in high school, fyi). In year eleven she must leave her all girl's school attend what has, up to that point, been an all boys school...the dreaded St. Sebastian's. Francesca and about thirty other girls are introduced to the all male cadre in an attempt to turn the school into a co-ed facility. I say attempt because the school has some adjusting to do before the institution will be truly co-educational. And then there is the crisis she is facing at home with her dear mother, a woman who inspires both fury and adoration in her daughter. What's a girl like Francesca to do when she has to leave behind friends to attend a new school, and her mother is falling apart at home, and she's falling for a boy that she has no business falling for? And how is she supposed to manage all those neanderthals at St. Sebastian's, anyway?

I dearly adored this story, but I wasn't convinced at first that I would. It got of to a bit of a slow start, but that might have had something to do with all the distractions while I was reading it...or a little bit of my bad mood. But I got over that, went to a quieter place to read, and, well, you know what happened then. I couldn't put it down.

This is what I like about the way Marchetta tells a story.

1. It feels like you would meet these people in real life. And then the things that they do and say feel like things people do and say in real life. Only maybe with a bit more panache, because hey, it is fiction, after all. In any case, I did feel like I might have taught a few kids like these particular teens.

2. Marchetta doesn't feel the need to got into detail about what her characters look like. In fact, she's very sparse in the telling. She focuses on what they do, instead, and in the end isn't that so so so so much better? I think so. I also like that she isn't creating demi-gods to be worshiped. I'm a little tired of the perfect schtick.

3. In this particular story, I really liked how Marchetta explored the subtleties of the female relationship. Don't you know that finding good girlfriends is a hard hard things to do? Francesca starts the story sort of morning the loss of her friends from her all girl's school, St. Stella's. Those girls are off to a different school, and so she is left with making new friends. But as the story goes on, Francesca starts to see that the old friends were probably never her real friends - they are selfish girls that she's better off without. But Marchetta isn't in your face about it. Slowly Francesca starts to see that while girl friends are necessary, some girls aren't the kind that you want to give bff status. In any case, female relationships can be really tricky, especially when you are young, and I really appreciated Marchetta's treatment of them in this book.

4. I loved the way Francesca warmed up to the boys in the school. And I'm not talking about the crush/boyfriend relationships. I'm just talking about how Francesca learned to navigate her way through a very masculine world and how she learned to value her budding friendships with them. I imagine that if you spend your entire education with girls only that boys would be something of a different species. I also imagine that if a I were a guy in this world...a world of no girls...and if my expectation had been that it would remain so until I graduated, well, then the introduction of the girls couldn't have been an easy thing for any of those boys either.

Over all, I loved it. I recommend* it especially to those who loved E. Lockhart or any of Marchetta's other work.

*My one warning is the drug/alcohol use and open discussion of sex. There isn't anything that I found overtly offensive, but I am just putting the warning out there for those who are wary of such things. The kids do drink, some do drugs and there are some discussions of sex/body parts.

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