Saving Francesca (a book review)

Today: Awoke. Ate a bagel. Sold Girl Guide cookies at Sears for two/too hours/long. Dropped home on the way to work. Made an egg sandwich. Rushed to work while eating aforementioned sandwich. Packed groceries for two [long] hours (x3 = 6 hours). Got home. Poured smoothie. Sat on couch with computer, drinking aforementioned smoothie.

That was a beautiful smoothie. But onto my obsession with Melina Marchetta. *sigh*

I love Melina Marchetta's books. They are the food for my soul that I didn't know that I needed. And that is a bearable cliche because it's also the truth. Her books make me feel whole and broken at the same time, in the best ways. All I do is inhale and exhale the words and yet they make me want to be better. A better person. A better writer. A better daughter. A better sister. A better friend.

I don't know how she does that.

A summary
Francesca is starting her second term at a school that was just for boys until recently when they opened their doors to girls. She misses the consistency and complacency of her old school and her old friends and to add to the unease, her mother won't get out of bed.
The novel chronicles Francesca's struggles to slide, struggle free, through school and keep herself from falling apart. It's about love, romantic and otherwise, and friendship and being saved but mostly it's about saving yourself.

A couple comments
-- The voice of the book is so genuine and honest that you can barely set it down. Francesca's words have a cynical resilience that is remarkable and relatable, to me at least. Marchetta has such a way with sentences and paragraphs that I honestly feel as if I could survive on these beautiful words. Almost.
-- The characters are unique and plucky and whole. They're people you want to know, want to believe exist. The community and support and love and friendship are just something you want to experience. These are friends I'm jealous of.
-- I love Francesca. I love her and I feel like she's a piece of me, or I'm a piece of her. I don't know if I've ever really felt so similar to a character in so many ways. And sometimes so different. Francesca is like my dark side, I think.
-- Will Trombol.

-- The dialog. I am such a huge dialog fan that it's ridiculous and Melina Marchetta does not disappoint.

-- The story is just so believable. It's not like 'mother with depression' is a new concept for a book but it works here on so many levels. There's the gleam of romance. The trials and doubts and happinesses of friendship. The angst of teenagerdom. The reality is both unhappy and hopeful. Depicting not depression so much as the effect it has on the people it touches, the truth of this story is just so real. This story feels like something you could live in, even if you wouldn't want to all the time.

A recommendation
Read this book. I did, twice in one week. It's worth it, so ridiculously worth it.

Saving Francesca is officially on the favourites list. And it's getting to be a long list.