Promotional Information

From the bestselling author of Looking for Alibrandi comes a memorable story told with compassion, humour and joy.

About the Author

Melina Marchetta is an Australian writer and former teacher. Her first novel, Looking for Alibrandi, was released in 1992 to much acclaim, sweeping the pool of young adult literary awards. Melina has also written short stories including Twelve Minutes as part of a Books Alive anthology, along with reviews and opinion pieces for The Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian and The Australian Literary Review. She has been a writer-in-residence around the country, as far north as Thursday Island and as far south as Hobart.

Melina now lives in Sydney and writes full-time. Rebecca Macauley is a talented and award-winning narrator. She has appeared in a variety of television programs, including the internationally popular series Neighbours and the Australian drama Blue Heelers. Her work includes the US feature film Darkness Falls and the children's television series Wicked Science. Rebecca has previously narrated Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta and Ursula Dubosarsky's Abyssinia.

Reviews

"A rich exploration of maturation, identity, family, and friendship."
*The Bulletin*

Sixteen-year-old Francesca's compelling voice will carry readers along during a transitional year in her family and school life. The narrator's vivacious mother falls into a deep depression soon after the teen narrator starts "Year Eleven" at St. Sebastian's, a Sydney boys' school now accepting but not particularly accommodating to girls (a teacher refers to the class as "gentlemen"; Francesca describes being outnumbered 750 to 30, as "either living in a fish bowl or like you don't exist"). Slowly, she begins to put down roots at her school, bonding with the girls from St. Stella's (her former school) whom she had considered misfits, and with some unlikely guys. She even finds herself falling for Will, whom she originally called "a stick-in-the-mud moron with no personality." Francesca also lets out her own personality, which she had kept hidden at St. Stella's because of her conceited friends. Her mother's illness takes its toll, though. Marchetta (Looking for Alibrandi) beautifully depicts the pain experienced by Francesca's whole family (at a wedding without her mother, Francesca observes while dancing with both her father and brother that even "combined, we feel like an amputee"), and Francesca's anger towards her father starts to escalate ("You think you can fix everything by forgetting about it but you just make things worse," she tells him). Readers will applaud the realistic complexity in the relationships here, the genuine love between the characters, as well as Francesca's ultimate decision to save herself. Ages 12-up. (Sept.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

"A rich exploration of maturation, identity, family, and friendship." -- The Bulletin