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Sep 02, 2011

Wendy Darling rated it:

I want to put my arms around Tom Mackee and give him a huge hug. I have a soft spot for boys who behave badly but are hurting on the inside--and boy, does Tom behave badly. And boy, is he hurting.

The Piper's Son takes place five years after the events in Saving Francesca. Tom and Jimmy were my favorite characters from that book, so I was really happy to dive immediately into TPS right after finishing the previous novel. When we meet up with Tom again, he's gone through a lot of drink More...

126 comments like (71 people liked it)

May 31, 2011

karen rated it:

utterly destroyed.

all i did while reading this book is cry. in the middle of penn station for hours. in the receiving room at work. in the subway. at home. tears. everywhere. i am going to have to buy the copy i borrowed from work because my tears got on a couple of pages.

it is unprecedented.

and it doesn't hurt that i have been blue for a couple of months now, but it also doesn't help that this woman knows how punch you in the heart in a variety of ways with More...

57 comments like (86 people liked it)

Apr 07, 2011

Flannery rated it:

In an interview at Persnickety Snark, Melina Marchetta said that she wanted to capture, “People holding it together and succeeding some days and failing other days” in this novel. Thank you. No, seriously, thank you for summing up a book that is so hard to capture. That comment made me think of a perfect quote--“You have to laugh at yourself because you’d cry your eyes out if you didn’t.” Sure, it’s from an Indigo Girls song but it’s still totally relevant. (right?) On those days you are faili More...

20 comments like (64 people liked it)

May 20, 2011

Mariel rated it:

Sometimes I can't take the shit in my real life (okay, my inner nothing to show for it life is mostly purgatorial neverending staircases too. Some stupid shit that amuses me way too much as well) and I pretty much have to run away for the cause of my fleeting hold of sanity (gasp!). My savior are those beach trips with my books. I've been shoring up all my hopes for them. I'm so happy that we've had beach weather again. The Piper's Son is my second beach book of 2011. I know this is going to be More...

19 comments like (28 people liked it)

Feb 07, 2011

Tatiana rated it:

I don't know how Melina Marchetta does it - takes a story that seems so soap-operish and turns it into something so honest and real.

Let me tell you what The Piper's Son is all about. Tom Mackee is a complete mess. His beloved uncle died 2 years ago, his father is lost somewhere, undoubtedly drunk, his mother and sister left his dad and moved to another state. Tom has been for years and still is lost and lonely. He takes drugs, he abandoned his friends, he betrayed the girl he loved, h More...

41 comments like (40 people liked it)

Jun 09, 2011

Janina rated it:

I know I should have savoured this book in its entirety. I should have read slowly and taken my time. The book clearly deserves savouring.
But I have no restraint. Instead, I holed up in my room for the whole afternoon (hurray for being a university student with Friday afternoons off!), neglecting food and any means of communication, and finished The Piper’s Son in about eight hours, taking only very small breaks. Now I feel a bit lightheaded and dizzy, my eyes are puffy and a little red fr More...

19 comments like (23 people liked it)

Aug 30, 2011

Emily rated it:

Edit 31/08/11: After re-reading some of my favourite parts of this book, I decided to overlook what made me decide to give it 4 instead of 5 stars before. It's just too good for anything less than 5.

Original Review
First I have to explain why I'm not giving this book the full five stars it seems everyone else is giving it. Likely it is just me being stupid and inappreciative of subtle beauties but I thought towards the beginning there were too many parts of the book that lost me More...

2 comments like (19 people liked it)

Jul 22, 2011

Arlene rated it:

Maybe she’d always been there. Maybe strangers enter your heart first and then you spend the rest of your life searching for them. - TM

I don’t know how she does it, but Marchetta delivers it every time - a fictional story that seems so real, a cast of characters you’re not ready to let go of, and a powerful dialog that reaches into your heart and soul and reveals lessons and observations that have you contemplating love, life, loss and redemption. Absolute and shear perfection that I More...

18 comments like (16 people liked it)

Mar 09, 2011

Alexa rated it:

I love Thomas. Out of all the boys in Saving Francesca, it was definitely Thomas who stood out to me. Really happy to know more about him and his situation, including the rest of his family's. Melina Marchetta is always so great with family and friend relationships.

I also loved the parts with Thomas and the other characters from Saving Francesca, especially Tara, the girls, and Will Trombal. Awesome friends and hilarious moments. The new characters were great as well. Oh, and I can't More...

38 comments like (17 people liked it)

Feb 08, 2011

Thomas rated it:

This book blew my fucking mind. Melina Marchetta just keeps getting better. If she keeps going at this rate, you will all one day read about some poor gal in Manhattan enjoying a quiet afternoon reading at home when her heart burst through her chest and her insides were torn out while enjoying Marchetta's latest novel.

And that's the thing with Marchetta: Her books are warm and funny and the writing is phenomenal and her teenagers are so real that you love them from the bottom of your More...

7 comments like (28 people liked it)

Jan 28, 2012

Aly (Fantasy4eva) rated it:

She's done it again. It feels cruel almost, to know that this is the end. I mean I still struggle with knowing that there is nothing to follow after JELLICOE ROAD but to have another one of my personal favourites come to an end is going to be tough to digest for a while.

Dear, dear Thomas. It's an odd feeling to know that one of your favourite characters might just be a complete stranger to you. You know when you think you know someone, and then you find out that really, you were not More...

4 comments like (9 people liked it)

Dec 19, 2011

Remy rated it:

It took me a LONG time to read this, yes, but don't be fooled by that. I had examinations and a lot of things to catch up to, making no room for reading at all.

FULL REVIEW HERE:
http://justremy.blogspot.com/2011/08/pip...

9 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jan 29, 2011

Isamlq rated it:

I haven’t read Saving Francesca yet… but from reading reviews of it, it seemed Tom MacKee was quite the guy. So to say that I was excited to get started on his story might be an understatement.

I love Melina Marchetta; she and John Green are probably two of my favorite YA contemporary writers. Now, to categorize The Piper's Son as just YA would be doing it a slight disservice because it is so much more than that! It’s about friendship and all the stuff attached to that. It’s about fa More...

31 comments like (8 people liked it)

Nov 16, 2011

Kate rated it:

there are no words

4 comments like (8 people liked it)

May 18, 2011

Catie rated it:

This is the third Melina Marchetta book I’ve read that deals with a large close knit family healing itself after being broken apart by tragedy (I don’t include Looking for Alibrandi or Finnikin of the Rock in that list), but I definitely wouldn’t say that the topic has gotten old for me. I think that’s Marchetta’s gift – she can take a simple story and fill it with so much gut wrenching truth and emotion that it’s just beautiful.

This book follows Tom Mackee, who was first introduced More...

3 comments like (8 people liked it)

Oct 18, 2010

Nic rated it:

"Maybe she'd always been there. Maybe strangers enter your heart first and then you spent the rest of your life searching for them."

Marchetta is a writing god!!! I have spent the day re-reading parts of this book that I love. I didn’t want this story to end.

The Piper’s Son is set 5 years after Saving Francesca. It is from Thomas Mackee’s POV and also his Aunty Georgia‘s, POV. Thomas Mackee isn’t the loveable misfit we all remember, he is sad and pissed off a More...

23 comments like (20 people liked it)

Jun 17, 2011

Megan rated it:

The Piper’s Son begins with Tom Mackee, and Tom is a mess. He’s perpetually wasted, on the outs with his family and friends, jobless and homeless. Throughout the novel we follow Tom, his friends and his family and see so many people (not just Tom) right the wrongs in their lives. The people Melina Marchetta has created have so much depth. They are flawed and their relationships are far from perfect. Yet, there is an astounding amount of unconditional love between them that comes across as so ve More...

6 comments like (13 people liked it)

Jul 22, 2011

Erin rated it:

I read this book with a perpetual lump in my throat. So, so much better than Saving Francesca, but I still recommend reading them both.

The Piper's Son is told in alternating perspectives between Tom and his aunt Georgie. This is probably due to my youngish age, but I enjoyed Tom's sections infinitely more than Georgie's. I was on Tom's side every step of the way, probably to a ludicrous degree. Even when my head told me he was being a douchebag and his ex-friends were right to keep More...

3 comments like (7 people liked it)

Jul 12, 2011

Noelle rated it:

Oh, wow. I might just have a new favorite book. This isn’t reading about characters--it’s living their lives. A few chapters in and you are no longer you. You’re a Finch or a Mackee, some random cousin hanging out in the banana chairs on the back porch with Georgie and Tom. You are right there in the middle of it, worrying about these people like they are flesh and blood family members you see every day. You're a part of the complicated web of relationships spanning through generations, fa More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jul 17, 2011

Cinnamon rated it:

This review may also be found on A Thousand Little Pages.

Two broken people, destroyed by circumstance and the irreversible passage of time.

There is Tom -- the uni drop-out who spends his time pining for the girl whose heart he broke so many winters ago. Drowning in regret, he finds solace in escape, just as his alcoholic father blots out the world when life becomes too much to handle. And then there is Tom’s Aunt Georgie, confused and yearning for understanding after that one More...

11 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 05, 2011

Alex rated it:

Diving off a table and getting 10 stitches on the head is no one's idea of a good time, but it might have been just what Tom Mackee needed.

It has been two years since the senseless death of his beloved Uncle Joe - who died in London on his way to work on July 7th, 2005 (need I spell it out?) - and almost that long since his family imploded. Two years since he walked out on Tara Finke, the girl he just can't forget.

Now his life is a jumble of drugs, gigs and one night-stands. More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Jul 20, 2011

Ari rated it:

4.5 stars.. This was such a beautiful story (as usual).

I am a Marchetta fan - she is simply amazing, she knows how to rip your heart out and then to put it back in place.
And, BTW, if the next one is about Jimmy i'm going to be so, so happy :D

9 comments like (4 people liked it)

Nov 25, 2011

Ashley rated it:

I don't know how she does it, but Melina Marchetta has done it to me again. I am so engulfed in her writing and the characters she writes about. I never want her stories to end, yet when they do I feel at peace with the turn out. She gives just enough at the end to make you satisfied with how the story has ended, but has you contemplating on what you MUST read next by her. I have now read 3 in a row of hers and think I will keep going through her bookshelf.

She is so talented its unreal More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 26, 2011

Maggie rated it:

Melina Marchetta... Only she could write a YA book where the main protagonists are a 21-year-old boy and his 42-year-old aunt -- and make you CARE so, so much. A slew of new characters is introduced in this book, and the fact that the majority of them are from Tom Mackee’s aunt’s world does nothing to dampen the appeal to a YA audience. The reason for this is the skill with which Marchetta writes relationships between people regardless of age or gender. Adults aren’t stock characters who exist o More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Apr 10, 2011

Leiah rated it:

It doesn't get better than Marchetta and again she proves it with The Piper's Son. If I had to pick one thing I like best about her writing it would be that she doesn't short-change any of her characters. She makes them all meaningful and authentic, even if they are only heard from once. She absolutely amazes me and I'm so grateful to have found her books and hope she continues to write for decades to come.

The messy story of the Finch-Mackee family will stick with me for a long, long More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Oct 25, 2011

Paula rated it:

Every time I read a Melina Marchetta novel, I can't get over how much I love it - and how it makes me feel. The Piper's Son is probably the most poignant and impacting of the three books I've read so far (the others being Looking for Alibrandi and Saving Francesca). And like the others it made me laugh out loud and it made me cry.

It's not always an easy read, give the level of grief Tom's going through (and the level of dickhead behaviour he indulges in), but that just makes the char More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 07, 2012

Haleema rated it:

When I returned this book to the library, I didn't want to let it go.

Ever.

How can Marchetta do this to me?

Why did she have to leave my heart into a million pieces and then put them back together in such ease? Just like that? While I'm the one who was suffering and crying and wanting more and more throughout the whole damn book? That's not fair. Does she not know what she's done for a reader like me? How did she do that all within 328 pages? Sometimes it take More...

7 comments like (4 people liked it)

Sep 23, 2011

Lyndz_♥ rated it:

4 & ½ stars

This is a beautiful book about life and how it is not always cupcakes and sunflowers. The only reason that I didn’t give it 5 stars is because this is not the type of book that I normally like & it didn’t really grab me right off the bat. Once I got into it though, I fell in love.

The characters were dynamic and inspiring and so real. The story line was definitely a tear jerker. I loved the poetic imagery this book drew upon. Just an all around wonderful book. More...

2 comments like (4 people liked it)

Aug 13, 2011

Peep (Pop! Pop!) rated it:

What an emotional roller coaster this one was! I'd say that The Piper's Son was Melina Marchetta's most adult book to date. I don't mean adult as in drugs, sex, violence, but adult as in mature.

The Piper's Son focuses mainly on Tom and his aunt Georgie. Both of them have their struggles that they're dealing with. For some reason, I enjoyed Georgie's story more than I enjoyed Tom's. I liked them both, but Georgie's pulled me in more.

Tom's storyline reminded me of a mature J More...

9 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 18, 2012

Emma rated it:

Thomas Finch Mackee is many things to many people. Musician, friend, and most recently complete jerk.

Five years ago his world seemed certain. He was friends with the girls from school. He wanted to be something more to Tara Finke. He would follow his charming father anywhere--most people would, Dom has always been a pied piper. That was before London.

That was before his family had to bury another empty coffin, this time for Tom's uncle lost in the London bombing.

More...

1 comment like (1 person liked it)