By: Tanya,
on 8/8/2013
First reviewed 3/2/11, Melina Marchetta's Printz winning novel is stunning for the craft with which she tells this layered story as well as the complex, compelling characters she creates. Stick with it and you will be greatly rewarded - and need a box of tissues. If you search the internet for reviews of Melina Marchetta's Printz winning novel, Jellicoe Road and read a few lines, you
By: Tanya,
on 3/2/2011
If you search the internet for reviews of Melina Marchetta's Printz winning novel, Jellicoe Road and read a few lines, you will know that this is a unique book that is difficult to write a review of. In her acceptance speech for the Printz (in which she says some really wonderful things about YA books and librarians, booksellers and bloggers) she thanks "Louis Sachar for writing Holes and
By: Tanya,
on 3/1/2011
As I sometimes beg of my readers, please don't judge Saving Francesca book by its cover! First published in Australia in 2003, this book has had a few different cover incarnations which can be seen at the end of the review. While attractive, it's somewhat misleading - this is not our typical teen high school story in any way. . . Francesca Spinelli begins her story by telling us how her
By: Tanya,
on 2/28/2011
The Piper's Son was released in March of 2010 in Australia, right side. I can't decide which cover I like better. The Piper's Son by Melina Marchetta revisits the characters from her 2003 novel, Saving Francesca, some five years after that book ended. Marchetta has a fascination with and an astounding ability to portray (and with great tenderness) the pain of families falling apart and the
By: Tanya,
on 8/27/2010
There are not enough words, time or space for me to tell you how deeply Finnikin of the Rock, the fourth novel from award winning Australian Melina Marchetta, affected me. I think I am a book lover because, in many ways, I am a coward. I would rather experience the world, the often painful, difficult to navigate, emotional world, at a distance from the pages of a book rather than in person.
I have to admit that I didn't stick with it when I got it from the library. Given that I can never read uninterrupted, I'm not sure that I can try it again for another few years. But I will try again!
Yes! Give it a try when you can sit with it, uninterrupted, for about 100 pages or so. One review I read recommended returning to the prologue and rereading it often, which I did, and it helped me keep track of the five friends. I'm not a mystery reader, but I enjoyed figuring out who was who and what was what and gasping or crying when things were revealed. It's a stunner.