The Piper's Son

The Piper's Son, by Melina Marchetta

Five years have passed since Saving Francesca, but now it's Thomas Mackee who needs saving. After his favourite 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?

Look, y'all know how much I love Melina Marchetta, and if you don't, then, uh, I'm sorry that my statement, "Marchetta has always been one of my favorite authors," was too subtle for your peanut sized brain. Plus, Saving Francesca was always one of my top books, top. It's unlikely that I will ever be able to write about it because any kind of objectivity goes out the window when I talk about it, it would basically be me typing things like, "And then the eggs, and she makes friends, and Tolstoy and Trotsky, and Justine is her rock(!), and then she runs away but she calls home, and Luca, and then they get picked up at school!!!!!!!!!" and it's a big sloppy mess. Hearts in my eyes, hand to god.

So I was excited about The Piper's Son, because Frankie was always such a great character and I really wanted to know how she's doing for herself, five years on. The Piper's Son is tonally a fairly different book than Saving Francesca and Searching for Alibrandi, though, and even Jellicoe Road.

The Piper's Son alternates viewpoints from chapter to chapter between Tom Mackee, the, well, kinda doofus-y guy from Saving Francesca, and his aunt Georgie. I was going to refresh my memory about Tom (I always got him mixed up with Jimmy) but I can't find my copy of the book, which is very odd, since I brought Jellicoe Road and Finnikin of the Rock down with me, and I distinctly remember squirreling away Saving Francesca to take with me, so I am suspicious about its absence. I've also misplaced something else that I can't seem to find anywhere, so I'm wondering if there's some Bermuda Triangle box that I haven't unpacked all the way where all these wonderful items are hiding. Or if I'm just losing my mind and they're right out in plain sight.

Now that I'm completely sidetracked, let's talk The Piper's Son! But first, a short digression about Finnikin of the Rock. This book is messed up, man. It's well written, for sure, but it's sort of like if you were dropped into the world of Candyland, only instead of getting Gumdrop Pass and Queen Frostine, Lord Liquorice was a prisoner in the mines, Princess Lolly watched her brother murdered in front of her, Grandma Nutt had been gang-raped by soldiers, and Gloppy had died of the plague after being exiled from Molasses Swamp. It is a dark fantasy book, peeps. And I was completely unprepared for it. Marchetta usually likes to keep the major drama offscreen, so that her characters are dealing with the aftermath, more than the event itself. It's like the exact opposite of thrillers or murder mysteries, which generally move on to the next book in the series as if all these dead bodies are just another day at work, ho-hum. (Not that I'm complaining. I'm not reading Agatha Christie because I want to find out about trauma counseling.) Also, a fun fact: my brother dressed up like Lord Liquorice as a camp counselor once, probably because he enjoys making children cry.

In The Piper's Son, the great off-screen drama is the death of Tom's uncle Joe, who was blown up on his way to work in London. The death half a world away of the beloved younger half-brother of Tom's father Dom, and his aunt Georgie completely destroys the family, and Dom spirals down into an alcoholic mess that further fragments the family. Now, two years later, Tom's hit rock bottom and winds up moving in with Georgie because he's got literally nowhere else to go. Georgie has her own problems, as she's having a baby with her ex, whom she hasn't been on good terms with since he fathered a child while the two of them were on a break, seven years ago.

I enjoyed this book, although I didn't feel it had the humor that Saving Francesca had, which I'm still not sure was intentional or not. At one point in the book, Tom's grandmother and aunt are having a bit of fun at him about his thing with Tara Finke, and his grandmother goes, "Too sensitive, that one." Tom's way too sensitive about a lot of things, from his father's actions, to his need to work off the debt his skeevy ex-flatmates incurred at the pub, to his need for Tara. He needs to lighten up, Francis.

A common theme through Marchetta books is also the way the men and women always seem to have these life-or-death feelings toward each other. There's always at least one couple in which the man loves the woman to pieces really loudly, and it's just killing him inside. And the woman returns the love, but it's usually much less flailing and floppiness, and more determination and duh-ness going on for her part. That kind of unswerving loyalty is maybe the least-realistic of her books, as I've not met one couple who's expressed their feelings like that publicly (even if they feel it privately) the way that they do in Marchetta's books.

Of course, maybe the genius in Marchetta's books is the way that everyone seems to be able to say what they've been keeping in all this time, and they feel better for it, and everything works out in the end. It's like a billboard-sized advertisement for the truth shall set ye free, which I can get behind, although that happy ending is not how things usually work out in real life, sadly. I always employ a go-for-broke mentality when it comes to relationships, at least, and even though I've made quite a sight of myself, I still don't regret it, even though I'm not even on speaking terms with the people with whom I've been so honest any more.

Maybe I don't feel so strong a connection with The Piper's Son as I did with Saving Francesca because this one is more about grief and losing a sibling than about depression and feeling alone, which I have more experience with. I can't imagine what it would be like to lose my brother, and I don't want to. It still made me tear up some, though not the full-out sobfest that the others did. Marchetta is a master at the hopeful outcome, the we're-going-to-have-a-fairytale-ending-because-we'll-work-our-butts-off-to-get-it-because-we-know-the-alternative-is-terrible ending.

Georgie was not a very compelling character to me. Perhaps because of the structure of the book, with the alternating chapters, Georgie and Tom just had very different concerns (although the same grief about Joe) and it was harder to get Georgie's thoughts fleshed out. Tom was easier - I'd read him before, and he lives everything in technicolor, while Georgie is washed out in immobilizing grief, anger, and indecision. I think Georgie's issues could have been a book all their own, but because they were sort of side-alonged to Tom's, they got somewhat short shrift and wound up being an afterthought. It would have been better, maybe, to do it all from Tom's perspective, but give more scenes of him and Georgie together talking to get a sense of her problems.

I can't even tell how much of this review is about The Piper's Son, and how much is about Marchetta in general. Any book of Marchetta's is worth reading, but The Piper's Son isn't in the same class as Saving Francesca and Jellicoe Road, in my opinion, more like a Searching for Alibrandi-type, which at least isn't horrifically scarring like Finnikin of the Rock. I think I went through PTSD with that book, hand to god. It's nice to see Frankie again, although one of my most-beloved things about Saving Francesca was the deep deep friendship between the girls and Tom and Jimmy, which is missing here, mostly because half of them have moved away. I will never get tired of reading about these people though, and I'm half hopeful about the way that Marchetta leaves Jimmy out of The Piper's Son, like maybe she'll write a book about his problems, and how friends and family overcome it all, although at this point, I'm not sure what new trauma she can send him through, maybe amputation or paralyzation, and don't even think about doing that to Jimmy, Marchetta, haven't I cried enough already?!

I wanted to talk a bit about the title, which refers to Dom, Tom's father, the union man who is a natural born leader, who winds up going round the twist after Joe dies (and possibly a bit before) and leads everyone into a cave and seals them up while the rats feast on the leftovers. Wait, wrong fairytale. OR IS IT? It was a bit tricky to get a handle on the family dynamics, and I couldn't tell what to feel about the step-grandfather Bill. That could have used some more explication, I think. One thing to note though is that this too is a book about the third sibling dying and leaving the other two in pieces (a la Prince of Tides), except this is somewhat more grounded, and less over-the-top. Unfortunately, this is a terrible paragraph to end on, but I don't really want to move it somewhere else, and I've sort of run out of things to say about it.

I do want to point out that I am grading on a curve here, since I hold Marchetta to a different standard than I do, say, P.B. Ryan, whose Gilded Age mysteries are a nice treat on a Sunday night, but which do not inspire me to harangue my mother until she reads one of them, the way I forced her to read Jellicoe Road and then relished each one of her tears. Homework assignment: Am I a terrible daughter? Discuss amongst yourselves behind my back.

Prince of Tides

Prince of Tides, by Pat Conroy

Lila Wingo - the beautiful, proud matriarch. Abused by her husband, she is the sweet and steely woman with social aspirations so great she is willing to sell her kids down the river to achieve them.

Henry Wingo - the cruel partriarch. Shrimper, schemer and loser, he is a man who will beat his sons to teach them not to cry. Now, perhaps too late, he strives to make peace with his own family.

Luke - the older son, a Vietnam veteran, a strong man of burning convictions who races towards a shocking fate while trying to save an entire town.

Savannah - the famous, gifted, and troubled poet. The cadenced beauty of her art and the cries of her illness are clues to the secret she holds in her heart. She has locked away the too-long hidden story of her wounded family. Now, to avoid destruction, it must be fully revealed.

Tom - Savannah's twin brother, the narrator. He is an unemployed football coach and English teacher with a loving wife who loves someone else. With his troubled sister and a perceptive psychiatrist, he is forced to look backward to unravel a history of violence, abandonment, commitment and love - and to find an answer for them all....

Woooo, doggy. This one was a doozy. I hope y'all like your Southern Gothic with a whole lotta shrimp, melodrama, and TIGERS, because that's what's on the menu tonight, folks. Now, strictly speaking, I'm not sure TPOT is Southern Gothic, since I get all my information from Wikipedia, and Wikipedia doesn't list TPOT on their Southern Gothic list. However, Wikipedia does describe Southern Gothic as:

[A] subgenre of gothic fiction unique to American literature that takes place exclusively in the American South. It resembles its parent genre in that it relies on supernatural, ironic, or unusual events to guide the plot. . . One of the most notable features of the Southern Gothic is "the grotesque" - this includes situations, places, or stock characters that often possess some cringe-inducing qualities, typically racial bigotry and egotistical self-righteousness - but enough good traits that readers find themselves interested nevertheless.

So let's see: set in the South? Check. Ironic or unusual events? Check check. The grotesque? Uh, yeah, check. The novel begins with events already piling up in quick succession: Tom, our narrator, learns in short order that his sister has been hospitalized for trying to commit suicide (again) and his wife is cheating on him, in part because of the emotional distance between them after his brother Luke's death and Tom's resultant nervous breakdown. Phew. Have you got all that? Good, because it doesn't slow down. The story is set up as Tom is relating his family history through flashbacks to his sister's psychiatrist, who is attempting to discover why Savannah is trying to die. The basic format is Tom, present day, telling the shrink of childhood events, which are related to us in episodic flashbacks. A great SECRET lies at the heart of the novel, but the flashbacks continue after that, up to the day of his brother Luke's death, which sets up the present day retelling.

TPOT is a rollicking good read. It's chock-a-block full of fine melodrama, aching sadness and depression, and long-buried secrets of the type you drive you insane. The pace doesn't let up - the foreshadowing in the first half of the book is enough to drive you to get to the big reveal, after which it's all downhill. And I mean that. The giant SECRET which is the apex of the novel is also oddly glossed over. If you read the flashbacks both before and after that, you would be hard pressed to say that anything had happened in between. The fallout, emotionally, is not discussed, in contrast to the fallout from Luke's death, which is what drives the New York scenes.

Conroy seems to think that the ending, with the final revelation of Luke's death, will be sufficient to explain the events of the present day (i.e., Savannah's wrist-cutting, Tom's breakdown, and the confession of all to Savannah's psychiatrist). Unfortunately, I didn't find that to be the case at all. If anything, I was left cold by Luke's demise, which is a feat, since I had been so fond of him in the flashbacks. Maybe it was the straw that broke the camel's back, but the close unbreakable bond between siblings in the flashbacks seemed to have cooled by the time Luke's one-man stand rolled around, leaving me to question just why Tom and Savannah both went so kablooey over it. That's maybe the biggest weakness of the book. The SECRET in the middle is completely unforgettable, and knits a tight bond between the family, while in comparison, Luke's one man vigilantism just seems to show how disparate and scattered the family has become. The siblings have gone on to separate lives, the mother has remarried (not a spoiler unless you are worse at picking up hints than I am). Maybe it's meant to be an illustration of how close the brothers and sister are no matter time or distance, but it just did not work for me.

In fact, the whole New York thing was complete filler for me. Part of my problem is that the people in the present day, and to some extent those flashbacks occurring towards the end of the narrative, all talk like cretins. Look, people don't talk like that in real life. I can't describe how crazy it made me to read exchanges like this between Tom and Susan, the psychiatrist:

"You make jokes about your sister's psychosis. What an odd man you are!"
"It's the southern way, Doctor."

and

"I must admit, Tom, that it irritates me every time you don your mantle of cultural yahoo intimidated by the big city. You're too smart a man to play that role very effectively."

"I'm sorry, Lowenstein," I said. "No one finds my role of New York debunker and cultural redneck more tiring than I do myself. I just wish it wasn't a cliche to hate New York, that it was a startling new doctrine originated by Tom Wingo."

I can't convey how ridiculous these exchanges sound to me (maybe they're perfectly normal and I'm the only one who found them to be as if aliens were trying to mimic actual human conversation) but let me attempt to describe it thusly: You know Life of Pi (just, bear with me)? And how in the end, people were arguing about whether or not the creatures in the boat were people or animals or just figments of Pi's imagination? It's like every character in Tom's adult life is a figment of his imagination, another aspect of him reflected in a mirror. That's why they all sound so similar. Similar and weird, because Tom is weird. And also because he's basically talking to himself.

Anyway.

The book is a glorious read, though, and Conroy has an artist's touch with the English language. And a very liberal hand with metaphor and simile. The flashbacks are ripe with description, overflowing with images:

[The undertaker] was tall and thin and had a complexion like goat cheese left on the table too long. The funeral parlor smelled like dead flowers and unanswered prayers. When he wished us a good day, his voice was reptilian and unctuous and you knew he was only truly comfortable in the presence of the dead. He looked as if he had died two or three times himself in order to better appreciate the subtleties of his vocation.

How great is that?! So it baffles me that when they made the movie, they focused more on the present New York stuff than the flashback scenes (or so I've heard through the imdb grapevine), because the flashbacks are what make this book, man. They are awesome. Every chapter has new tragedies, each presents a new evil set against the family. Every event brings us closer to doooooooooom. Or, okay, maybe not, but it sure feels like it! TPOT builds wonderfully to its violent climax, like a train wreck you can see in the making.

TPOT has too many faults to be a great piece of literature, but it's definitely worth reading, and you will probably never forget it as long as you live. The lyrical tone of the writing balances nicely the grim events of the Wingo family. Although a more ridiculous final line, I have never read. I am not even going to spoil it, no matter how much I want to, and no matter that even if I did spoil it, it wouldn't matter because it doesn't make any more sense out of context than in! (okay, maybe a little more sense, but not much).

P.S. Poll time! Greatest improbability in the The Prince of Tides: the events of the SECRET, or the fact that Savannah got her version published as a children's book?

I mean, really.