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Published Mar 2011
336 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Award-winning author Melina Marchetta reopens the story of the group of friends from her acclaimed novel Saving Francesca - but five years have passed, and now it’s Thomas Mackee who needs saving. After his favorite uncle was blown to bits on his way to work in a foreign city, Tom watched his family implode. He quit school and turned his back on his music and everyone that mattered, including the girl he can't forget. Shooting for oblivion, he's hit rock bottom, forced to live with his single, pregnant aunt, work at the Union pub with his former friends, and reckon with his grieving, alcoholic father. Tom's in no shape to mend what's broken. But what if no one else is either? An unflinching look at family, forgiveness, and the fierce inner workings of love and friendship, The Piper’s Son redefines what it means to go home again.
"Starred Review. The ending may wrap up somewhat neatly, but readers who make this intense journey with Tom and Georgie will feel they deserve the sweet resolutions. Ages 14 up." - Publishers Weekly
"While it is a sequel to the brilliant Saving Francesca, The Piper's Son works as a stand-alone book. Indeed it's a story so full of heart - sorrowful, but warm and funny - it won't be easy to forget." - Angie Schiavone, The Sydney Morning Herald.
"The Piperis Son left me breathless with heart pounding - it is a beautifully written love song about the flaws and strengths of family and the long journey of grief, about the love and laughter and disappointments that tie people together." -
A Chair, A Fireplace and a Tea Cozy blog
"Tom's voice is utterly convincing and it's a satisfying experience to watch Marchetta take a broken fragmented and frequently unlikable character and piece him back together, word by word...Outstanding fiction" - The Sunday Age (Australia)
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Photo: Marc Burlace
Melina Marchetta is one of Australia's most successful writers of young-adult fiction and is a best-selling and critically acclaimed author in more than twenty countries and in eighteen languages. In 2009 Marchetta won the prestigious Michael L. Printz Award from the American Library Association for On the Jellicoe Road, and Melina's screenplay for this book is currently set to be made into a major film with an international cast to be directed by Looking for Alibrandi director Kate Woods. Melina is also developing a television series with writer/director Cathy Randall (Hey Hey It's Esther Blueburger) and is a writer for ABC-TV's Dance Academy. Finnikin of the Rock, Book One of the Lumatere Chronicles, was first published in Australia in 2008, followed in 2010 by the companion novel to her...
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