Saving Francesca

2003 (published) ; Melina Marchetta

Francesca, a sixteen-year-old girl, accustomed, but unoriginally rebellious, to her mother's intrusive parenting, learns quickly how change can spiral your life out of control, can force you to think differently, and affect your behaviors. She cannot breathe without her mother commenting on how she could make better decisions, how she could become more social, how she could learn to appreciate life...but then one day, her mother does not get out of bed, and Francesca soon realizes how much she depends on her mother for guidance, especially as she starts a new school her mother recently transferred her to, a school newly co-ed, where the ratio of girls to boys runs around one-to-fifty. Francesa is forced to deal, and hopefully learn to cope, with new friends, a new sense of isolation, and new social challenges without the one person she unknowingly relied upon--her mother.

I randomly grabbed this novel off a bookshelf in a classroom at one of my past long-term substituting positions, intrigued by the exact cover displayed here: I wondered whether Francesca's conflict, or what she required "saving" from, mirrored Melinda's in Speak or ran more along the lines of Bella's in the Twilight series. At first, the writing style appeared choppy and the tone, oddly depressing; however, I am extremely glad I always finish a novel once started because I was very tempted to set this book back on the bookshelf by the end of the third chapter, and I would have been sadly cheated! After braving through the fourth chapter, I began to realize the writing's original choppiness and tone was beautifully intentional, developing character and creating the story's momentum. By the end of the fifth chapter, I was hooked, finishing the whole thing in two days. I couldn't put it down. 

Melina Marchetta's approach to her main theme lets the reader ache and learn along with Francesca, unraveling the plot like a well-studied painting, catching something new hidden in its layers as you spend more time consuming it, or return to it after years passed, lending a different, aged perspective to its content.