Saving Francesca

Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I wanted to like Saving Francesca more than I did. After all, it’s about a topic close to my heart: depression. In particular, it’s about the effects on a family when a parent is incapacitated by depression.

It’s not really fair for me to measure this depiction in view of my own experience of a parent with depression. Every family will experience it differently; indeed, every person within a family will experience it differently. So, while Francesca’s experience didn’t always ring true for me, I could appreciate what an important topic it is for writers of YA Literature to address. After reading so many YA books wherein parents die, the far more common reality of clinical depression is due more attention.

The strength of this novel is the characterisation of Francesca’s friend and family groups. As with Looking for Alibrandi, I found myself enjoying the lead character’s interactions with her school friends more than with the love interest. I guess Prince Charming is doomed to be a boring character type. Marchetta also writes developed teachers and school administrators; for the most part, they genuinely care about and respect the young people in their care. (Of course, there’s always one bad apple who really shouldn’t be teaching.)

Overall, I found myself laughing out loud at the antics of Francesca’s friends and extended family, and being moved to tears by her love for her brother. But I screamed internally at some of Francesca’s overwrought monologues and raised my eyebrow sceptically at a group of Year 11’s knowledgeable discussions of multiple Shakespeare plays.

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Does My Head Look Big in This?

Does My Head Look Big In This? by Randa Abdel-Fattah

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

My first thought about Does My Head Look Big In This? was, “It’s Looking for Alabrandi for a new generation.” That impression may have more to do with the narrator of the audiobook version I listened to using the same wide-eyed tone that characterised the reader of the audiobook version of Alibrandi. Still, the similarities don’t end there. Both books have young, female protagonists who, simply because of their cultural and religious backgrounds, have no option but to think about their place in the world. Unlike the predominantly Anglo-Australians each girl goes to school with, they’re required to move between two worlds as often as they go to school and return home each day.

In this book, the central character, Amal, makes the decision to become a full-time wearer of the hijab. Her parents are concerned about the response she will attract from her school and friends, while her school and friends demand to be reassured her parents haven’t forced her to wear the hijab against her will. Inevitably, perhaps, Amal becomes representative of Islam and every act done in its name; consequently, she is required by non-Muslims to explain the atrocity of events like the Bali bombings and, to the well-intentioned, be a spokesperson and educator on her religion.

First published in 2005, I think this might be an early attempt in young adult literature to help young people explore issues of religious identity in a post-September 11 world. In Australia, the Bali bombings, which are featured in the novel, would have added a particular urgency to the need for this kind of discussion. Certainly, there’s a sense that Abdel-Fattah wrote a list of the most common expressions of ignorance and bigotry towards Muslim-Australians and incorporated them into the experiences of Amal, her friends and family. It feels quite jam-packed and sometimes didactic. That said, Does My Head Look Big In This? has made me curious about other books from the perspectives of other western Muslims.

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Looking for Alibrandi

Looking for Alibrandi by Melina Marchetta

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

3.5 stars

I think if I’d read this book twenty-three years ago I’d have appreciated it more. It’s a coming of age story from what seems to be a more innocent time: pre-September 11, pre-social media; from an era when a family gathering to make a year’s worth of passata was cause for embarrassment rather than a mark of culinary cosmopolitanism and a sure-fire ticket to the MasterChef grand final.

I suppose it’s a good thing that third-generation Italian-Australian Josephine Alibrandi’s narration of the trials of her final year in high school now seems dated; being of southern European descent, a ‘wog’, no longer attracts unfavourable commentary from the casually racist in this country. Not that there’s much evidence, more broadly, that Australian society has become less racist in the intervening years–attention has merely shifted to more recent migrants who have arrived in Australia after fleeing war and persecution in their homelands.

For better or worse, the storyline around the mental well-being of one of Josephine’s friends has stood the test of time. I look forward to the day when John Barton’s fate is rendered unbelievable.

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Laurinda by Alice Pung

Laurinda by Alice Pung
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a novel about the intersection of class and race in Australia, a country that prides itself on the notion of ‘the fair go’. It begins compliantly enough: the protagonist, Lucy Lam, is successful in her application for the inaugural access and equity scholarship at Laurinda, an exclusive private girls’ school.

Narrated in the epistolary style, Lucy shares her triumphs and doubts, as she, the child of Vietnamese refugees who work in a carpet factory and sew for pittance from home, enters into the elite Catholic society of Laurinda.

Lucy quickly learns that her schooling to date does not meet the Laurinda curriculum standard as she is required to take remedial English via a series of individual tutoring sessions. While she easily understands the explicit educational expectations of her new school, she struggles considerably with the implicit curriculum: the social and cultural values and prejudices that underpin every interaction she has with her peers, teachers, and the school’s administration.

Pung interrogates the rhetoric of access and equity that pervades educational discourse and, indeed, Australian society, revealing it to be less about affecting social change than maintaining the status quo. Laurinda is a tale of noblesse oblige , Australian style.

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A Pocketful of Eyes

A Pocketful of Eyes by Lili Wilkinson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Things to like about A Pocketful of Eyes:

1. It’s a contemporary homage to classic fictional detectives from Nancy Drew to Miss Marple.
2. The central character, Bee, has a volunteer job as a taxidermist at a museum. That’s cool.
3. Bee looks askance at anyone who makes dumb remarks about mobile phones and social media.
4. Bee’s nickname for her mother’s new boyfriend is the Celestial Badger
5. I learned the difference between venom and poison thanks to Bee’s nerdy love interest, Toby.

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