Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta

Title: Saving Francesca

Author: Melina Marchetta

Genre: Fiction

Publisher: Puffin, Penguin

Published: 5^th June 2006 (First published 2003)

Format: Paperback

Pages: 242

Price: $19.99

Synopsis: A memorable and much-loved Australian classic told with humour, compassion and joy, from the internationally bestselling and multi-award-winning author of Looking for Alibrandi.

Francesca is at the beginning of her second term in Year Eleven at an all boy’s school that has just started accepting girls. She still misses her old friends, and, to make things worse, her mother has had a breakdown and can barely move from her bed.

But Francesca had not counted on the fierce loyalty of her new friends, or falling in love, or finding that it’s within her power to bring her family back together.

A memorable and much-loved Australian classic told with humour, compassion and joy, from the internationally bestselling and multi-award-winning author of Looking for Alibrandi.

~*~

Francesca is in Year Eleven at St Sebastian’s, a school that has been an all-boys’ school until recently. She’s been separated from her friends from Stella’s – most of whom have gone to other schools, and now her mother has had a breakdown, and is trying to pull through depression after having to be everything for everyone in so many ways. Francesca feels alone – her brother and father need her to do more than she should be doing on top of everything else, and she feels pulled in all directions, and feels an unease when the family is separated to try to help her mum.

Yet Francesca has new friends she can count on in an uncertain world that is still filled with love of all kinds, and her power and strength to bring her family back together, all in the true style of Melina Marchetta, who is best-known for Looking for Alibrandi, a book that has been read by many school students. One of the things that makes Melina’s books special is that they have something that everyone can relate to in them, something universal as well as specific to Italian or migrant culture that opens our world beyond what we have and see in our own lives.

It is a book that I related to, as I was the same age as Francesca when the book was released, so a lot of the popular culture references and the way Francesca, her family, and friends did things made sense and in that way, I think it is relatable to my generation because it reflects the early 2000s world we grew up in, whilst the emotions and relationships are universal – we all feel love, we all have friends and family, and we all have conflicts within these emotions and relationships that will always be around. The methods we use to communicate may have changed, but the emotions will often be largely unchanged. I think this is the beauty of Melina’s books – they are a time capsule for those who grew up in the years her YA books were set, but they have something collectively understandable about them that makes them readable for all. I quite like the references in this and Looking for Alibrandi that in a sense, date the books, because it gives me a solid setting to hold onto and understand, to situate the story within. As a reader, I like this as well as the books that feel like they can be set anywhere, as there is a place for all these sorts of settings.

Francesca is part of the generation – like me – where we were on the cusp of having everything connected but at the same time not being constantly connected or reachable. It was nice to go home and be able to turn technology off at the end of the day and focus on other things. It meant that in a sense we’ve had the best of both, and we understand both. This is a book that always seemed to be out at the library, and maybe it is because it was relatable then for my classmates, and is still relatable now for teens and people like me who grew up and graduated high school at the same time as Francesca. It is a universally relatable book that can still read twenty years after publication. I loved it and can’t wait to read more of Melina’s books.