Growing Up With Melina Marchetta

At my age (20ish) a lot of people, including many of my friends, don’t read much. They “don’t have time” or “can’t be bothered” and maybe its because we spend a lot of our time being told what to read, from school and into university, so that when you want to switch off reading isn’t what jumps to mind. The choice between ‘adult’ fiction and ‘teenage’ fiction is a tricky one, because chances are you’re going to be reading about someone a few years younger or older than yourself. Not always that easy to relate to.

Melina Marchetta is one of the authors helping to bridge that gap. I read Saving Francesca in year 9 for school, and On The Jellicoe Road became a favourite of mine in year 12.

The group of friends from Saving Francesca are reprised in her latest book, this time 5 years older, with 5 years worth of problems added into the mix and a different main character. By no means a sequel, The Piper’s Son is a stunning stand alone novel. But when you already know the characters, it adds a certain something to the experience. Having grown up with Melina Marchetta, it seems her characters have grown up with me too.

Thomas Mackee is an (about) 21 year old who has dropped out of uni and watched his family fall away from under him. The Piper’s Son is his story of coming back from the edge of a cliff, or in actual fact, a stage. Sometimes you have to fall.

When your uncle was “blown to smithereens” on his way to work  in the London Underground bombings, things understandably take a turn for the worse. He thought he wanted oblivion, to make the regrets and heartbreak disappear. A once tight knit family spread over state lines. A once inseparable group of friends spread over a few continents. Once Tom’s mind clears from his year in so -called oblivion, he realises that the rest of world didn’t stop moving when he fell off the map. With the help of some old friends and the family who need him as much as he needs them, Tom is figuring out how to live again.

Make no mistake, this fantastic, emotionally diverse book will make you laugh and cry. And you won’t be able to put it down.

So thank you, Melina Marchetta, for continuing to write great books for people my age that are about people who are around my age. It’s like it was meant to be. Recommended for young women and men aged 16 up.

Melina Marchetta Teaser

Penguin Books Australia isn’t exactly someone I expected to become friends with whilst social networking on Facebook, but I’m glad I did. Today thanks to this “friendship” I followed a link to this tantilising taste of the new Melina Marchetta book called The Piper’s Son. Her previous titles include the best selling Looking for Alibrandi and Saving Francesca as well as one of my favourite young adult titles On the Jellicoe Road which made it onto our Top Ten Books for Teen Girls list. This prologue has a lot of potential and unusually for Marchetta, the protagonist is male, a university aged boy named Tom. Out next month, I am really looking forward to this one. Paperback, $24.95.

Ten Books Teens Need – Girls

The Fairfield Books staff have been gathering our favourite children’s books, divided into categories according to age with 10 books in each. So far we have blogged about our top 10 books for babies, toddlers, preschoolers, first readers, juniors and tweens. We have finally arrived at the category we found most difficult – teens. With so much great literature out there for the 15+ age groups, reducing the choices down to just 10 sparked heated debates and in the end was just too hard! So we have 20 best books for teens, 10 for girls and 10 for boys. Don’t be limited to one category however, while the books in each might be slightly more boy or girl orientated, all are fantastic reads.

So here are the first 10, our top picks for teenage girls – enjoy!

The Year the Gypsies Came by Linzi Glass

How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff

On the Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta

Emma by Jane Austen

So Much to Tell You by John Marsden

Peeling the Onion by Wendy Orr

Feeling Sorry for Celia by Jaclyn Moriarty

When You Wake and Find Me Gone by Maureen McCarthy

Touch Me by James Moloney

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

Favourite books – On The Jellicoe Road

This title by Melina Marchetta is a truly beautiful young adult book sitting in the cross over to adult fiction, and is definitely a stand out read of my teenage years. The complex main character is 17 year old Taylor Markham, whose at a boarding school called the Jellicoe School in New South Wales. She has practically no memory of her father and was abandoned roadside by her mother as a young girl. On The Jellicoe Road is Taylor’s story, as she tries to untangle the mystery of her past.

At school, holding positions of responsibility that seem of little consequence to her, Taylor has power despite not being particularly popular, known to be unreliable and distant. Taylor must lead Jellicoe in the territory wars between the Jellicoe school and the Cadets who are from a school in Sydney along with the Townies. The leader of the Cadets, Jonah Griggs is a strong and eventually important male character which helps the book appeal to boys more than Marchetta’s previous books.

Written parallel to Taylor’s story is excerpts from a manuscript written by the woman who found Taylor who lives on the school grounds, Hannah. Hannah is the only adult that Taylor has any faith in, faith which is ripped away when Hannah disappears early in the book, which really throws the fragile Taylor for a loop. The story is of five teens who lived on the Jellicoe road twenty years before the relevance of which is cloudy at first but becomes more and more intriguing until you just can’t figure it out and can’t wait for all to be revealed.

The story has a mix of romance, mystery and a whole lot of tension. As the book progresses at times painfully slowly, readers must be patient as all the signposts and clues come together. Taylor’s erratic journey to grow from a conflicted and confused teenage into a calm and collected young woman is tumultuous and, as a reader, absolutely riveting.

-Steph.