Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta
January 22nd, 2005 at 9:30 am (Books)
I have always been a bit underwhelmed by Looking for Alibrandi, Marchetta’s first book. I quite enjoyed it, but it didn’t give me the real insight into what it is like to be an Italian/Australian that I had been hoping for. Also, I found much of the plot pretty conventional.
Saving Francesca is a whole different matter. The fact that the central character is Italian is not foregrounded so much – it’s not the main point of the book. I thought the the two plot strands – mother suffering from depression, and main character gradually forming a new peer group – wove together well. I found the main character very engaging, particularly the way that her self image was so bound up in the perceptions of her former friends, and she only gradually realises that she has changed – and that they have always been shallow. The subsidiary characters were presented more superficially, so I didn’t really feel that I “knew” them as well as Francesca, but then that makes sense for a first person narrative. However, I liked them, and I liked the way they gradually changed as Francesca’s perceptions did. The only one who left me unmoved was Will, who I basically found completely uninteresting. This is probably because he is a relatively conventional romantic lead, whereas most of the other characters are slightly quirky.
Delilah said,
October 23, 2007 at 2:50 pm
Hey! What is the main plot of Saving Francesca? I have to know for an essay I am doing on Saving Francesca. I agreee… Will was the least interesting character who made his feelings very confusing. I think it was heartless when he pashed her at the party when he already had a girlfriend – leaving Francesca with false hopes, (at least for a while).
Administrator said,
October 30, 2007 at 8:04 pm
Not wanting to sound like your teacher, but … I think you should try and work out for yourself what the main plot is. Though for different readers, different aspects of the story are likely to be important. [Digression – at a work training course once, we had to summarise the plot of a movie in one or two sentences (can’t remember why) and my group chose Million Dollar Baby. My summary was compleletly different from everyone else’s, because I saw the story as being about Clint Eastwood’s character, and everyone else thought it was about Hilary Swank’s character. End of digression.]
But some things you might consider when trying to work out what is (for you) the main plot of Saving Francesca are … friendship, dealing with family crises, growing up, being true to yourself rather than being the person other people want you to be, coping when your support structures disappear, learning about yourself and your own strengths and weaknesses. And I’m sure there are lots of other things as well.
BTW, I agree that Will was pretty heartless. Actually, I really didn’t like him much at all. But maybe if the story had been told from his point of view, you might have seen that he was also confused about who he was, where he was going and who he wanted to be with. And maybe he would have come across as more sympathetic and understandable. Maybe.