Review: The Piper's Son, by Melina Marchetta

[Russ Allbery]

The Piper's Son
by Melina Marchetta

Series:    Francesca #2
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Copyright: 2010
Printing:  2011
ISBN:      0-7636-5458-2
Format:    Kindle
Pages:     330

Tom Mackee's family has fallen apart. The impetus was the death of his
uncle Joe in the London tube terrorist bombings, but that was only the
start. He destroyed his chances with the only woman he really loved.
His father's drinking got out of control, his mother left with his
younger sister to live in a different city, and he refused to go with
them and abandon his father. But then, six months later, his father
abandoned him anyway. As this novel opens, Tom collapses while
performing a music set, high on drugs and no sleep, and wakes up to
discover his roommates have been fired from their jobs for stealing,
and in turn have thrown him out of their apartment. He's at rock
bottom.

The one place he can turn for a place to stay is his aunt Georgie, the
second (although less frequent) viewpoint character of this book. She
was the one who took the trip to the UK to try to find out what
happened and retrieve her brother's body, and the one who had to return
to Australia with nothing. Her life isn't in much better shape than
Tom's. She's kept her job, but she's pregnant by her ex-boyfriend but
barely talking to him, since he now has a son by another woman he met
during their separation. And she's not even remotely over her grief.

The whole Finch/Mackee family is, in short, a disaster. But they have a
few family relationships left that haven't broken, some underlying
basic decency, and some patient and determined friends.

I should warn up-front, despite having read this book without knowing
this, that this is a sequel to Saving Francesca, set five years later
and focusing on secondary characters from the original novel, and I
read it out of order. I've subsequently read that book as well, though,
and I don't think reading it first is necessary. This is one of the
rare books where being a sequel made it a better stand-alone novel. I
never felt a gap of missing story, just a rich and deep background of
friendships and previous relationships that felt realistic. People are
embedded in networks of relationships even when they feel the most
alone, and I really enjoyed seeing that surface in this book. All those
patterns from Tom's past didn't feel like information I was missing.
They felt like glimpses of what you'd see if you looked into any other
person's life.

The plot summary above might make The Piper's Son sound like a
depressing drama fest, but Marchetta made an excellent writing
decision: the worst of this has already happened before the start of
the book, and the rest is in the first chapter. This is not at all a
book about horrible things happening to people. It's a book about
healing. An authentic, prickly, angry healing that doesn't forget and
doesn't turn into simple happily-ever-after stories, but does involve a
lot of recognition that one has been an ass, and that it's possible to
be less of an ass in the future, and maybe some things can be fixed.

A plot summary might fool you into thinking that this is a book about a
boy and his father, or about dealing with a drunk you still love. It's
not. The bright current under this whole story is not father-son
bonding. It's female friendships. Marchetta pulls off a beautiful
double-story, writing a book that's about Tom, and Georgie, and the
layered guilt and tragedy of the Finch/Mackee family, but whose
emotional heart is their friends. Francesca, Justine, absent Siobhan.
Georgie's friend Lucia. Ned, the cook, and his interactions with Tom's
friends. And Tara Finke, also mostly absent, but perfectly written into
the story in letters and phone calls.

Marchetta never calls unnecessary attention to this, keeping the camera
on Tom and Georgie, but the process of reading this book is a dawning
realization of just how much work friendship is doing under the
surface, how much back-channel conversation is happening off the page,
and how much careful and thoughtful and determined work went into
providing Tom a floor, a place to get his feet under him, and enough of
a shove for him to pull himself together. Pulling that off requires a
deft and subtle authorial touch, and I'm in awe at how well it worked.

This is a beautifully written novel. Marchetta never belabors an
emotional point, sticking with a clear and spare description of actions
and thoughts, with just the right sentences scattered here and there to
expose the character's emotions. Tom's family is awful at
communication, which is much of the reason why they start the book in
the situation they're in, but Marchetta somehow manages to write that
in a way that didn't just frustrate me or make me want to start banging
their heads together. She somehow conveys the extent to which they're
trying, even when they're failing, and adds just the right descriptions
so that the reader can follow the wordless messages they send each
other even when they can't manage to talk directly. I usually find it
very hard to connect with people who can only communicate by doing
things rather than saying them. It's a high compliment to the author
that I felt I understood Tom and his family as well as I did.

One bit of warning: while this is not a story of a grand reunion with
an alcoholic father where all is forgiven because family, thank
heavens, there is an occasional wiggle in that direction. There is also
a steady background assumption that one should always try to repair
family relationships, and a few tangential notes about the Finches and
Mackees that made me think there was a bit more abuse here than anyone
involved wants to admit. I don't think the book is trying to make
apologies for this, and instead is trying to walk the fine line of
talking about realistically messed up families, but I also don't have a
strong personal reaction to that type of story. If you have an aversion
to "we should all get along because faaaaamily" stories, you may want
to skip this book, or at least go in pre-warned.

That aside, the biggest challenge I had in reading this book was not
breaking into tears. The emotional arc is just about perfect. Tom and
Georgie never stay stuck in the same emotional cycle for too long,
Marchetta does a wonderful job showing irritating characters from a
slightly different angle and having them become much less irritating,
and the interactions between Tom, Tara, and Francesca are just perfect.
I don't remember reading another book that so beautifully captures that
sensation of knowing that you've been a total ass, knowing that you
need to stop, but realizing just how much work you're going to have to
do, and how hard that work will be, once you own up to how much you
fucked up. That point where you keep being an ass for a few moments
longer, because stopping is going to hurt so much, but end up stopping
anyway because you can't stand yourself any more. And stopping and
making amends is hard and hurts badly, and yet somehow isn't quite as
bad as you thought it was going to be.

This is really great stuff.

One final complaint, though: what is it with mainstream fiction and the
total lack of denouement? I don't read very much mainstream fiction,
but this is the second really good mainstream book I've read (after The
Death of Bees) that hits its climax and then unceremoniously dumps the
reader on the ground and disappears. Come back here! I wasn't done with
these people! I don't need a long happily-ever-after story, but give me
at least a handful of pages to be happy with the characters after
crying with them for hours! ARGH.

But, that aside, the reader does get that climax, and it's note-perfect
to the rest of the book. Everyone is still themselves, no one gets
suddenly transformed, and yet everything is... better. It's the kind of
book you can trust.

Highly, highly recommended.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Reviewed: 2017-11-14

-- 
Russ Allbery (eagle at eyrie.org)              <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>