The Piper's Son

Melina Marchetta

Apr 2011 · Candlewick Press

About this ebook

The award-winning author of Finnikin of the Rock and Jellicoe Road pens a raw, compelling novel about a family’s hard-won healing on the other side of trauma.
(Age 14 and up)

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.

Ratings and reviews

Melina Marchetta has one of the most gripping proses I have ever witnessed, and her characters are so complex that there is an aspect of every character for someone to relate and connect to. I first started reading her novels in the form of Finnikin of the Rock, the year before its sequel, From of the Exiles was released. And now, some years later, as I've developed past my days of fantasy, I find the same love of her works in her realistic fiction of On Jellicoe Road and now, in The Piper's Son. The Piper's Son opened with a character I was immediately upset by, in the form of Tom. How could you be so cruel to someone who wanted to help you? But Ms. Marchetta made him so complex that as I finished the last few pages, and read the phone call, I found myself wanting to know where his life went thereafter, and had to remember that it was a work of fiction. It is a mark of a truly great author to write complexity of such reality regardless of venue, and thus, I will always recommend her

This book was so beautiful. I was hesitant to purchase it because it was from Tom's POV and in 'Saving Francesca' he'd been my least favorite character. But this book was perfect and it made me fall in love with Tom, Georgie, Anabel and the whole Finch/Mackee clan. NOW WHERE'S JIMMY?!

About the author

Melina Marchetta is the acclaimed and multi-award-winning author of Finnikin of the Rock, an Aurealis Award winner; Jellicoe Road, a Michael L. Printz Medal winner; Saving Francesca; and Looking for Alibrandi. She lives in Australia.