Saving Francesca: A Mother's Influence
In the past 5 years, I’ve lived in 6 different places. I’ve moved from dorm room to dorm room, apartment to apartment, and with each move, I spend a majority of my time thinking about which books will travel around with me. There are about 10 that come with me everywhere, books that I read repeatedly throughout high school, collections of poetry that have become a constant comfort, The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama, an assortment of used, pocket sized, paperback John Steinbeck novels.
It’s difficult to select just one book that has influenced me, because books themselves influence me; bookstores move me; old, worn pages inspire me. For E. M. Forster, “the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.” Good books come to you when you need them most, probably before you realize you need them, and deliver the advice, insight, catharsis, or laughter that you need at that moment. Forster describes the difference between being impressed by a book and being influenced by one, arguing that when you feel opened, extended by a book, that is not the same as being influenced by one. I agree that to be impressed by something is to be held at a distance by the space between great and ordinary, however I see no difference between being influenced by something and being extended. I feel both influenced and extended by the opening paragraph in John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row; as I read it, the subtle cadence of the words follows a steady beat in my mind.
I wish I could say that the book that has most influenced me is a story of an epic adventure or a passionate romance, or a complicated, dense novel a part of the English canon - Pride and Prejudice, The Grapes of Wrath, The Great Gatsby. While I have enjoyed all of these novels, when I think about a book that has really influenced me, I think of one that has made its way into a moving box each year and onto a shelf in a new dorm room or apartment, the book that I grab in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep or wake up from a bad dream, the book whose lines I prematurely recite in my head before I read them on the page.
I do not remember exactly when Melina Marchetta’s Saving Francesca came to me, probably one Christmas, while I was in high school - my mother has the uncanny ability to find books for me that I need before I am even aware that I need them. With the first page, I was dropped into Francesca’s world, recognizing the sadness and the sense of relief, “This morning, my mother didn’t get out of bed . . . There’s just silence. And for the first time all year, I go to school and my only agenda is to get to 3:15.”
I am usually drawn to well-developed characters, women who struggle but find strength, who are intelligent, witty, and flawed. Saving Francesca follows 16-year old Francesca, beginning the year at a new school, formerly all-male, unsure of where she fits in, suddenly bereft of her tight-knit group of friends, her sense of comfort, and her mother’s overbearing presence. It seems like it should follow the traditional formula of young adult novels, but somehow, this one shifts away. Usually parents are minor figures, on the periphery of their child’s story, but in this novel, the relationship between Francesca and her mother is woven into every chapter, and the novel itself is framed by her mother, her depression, and her recovery. Their relationship is full of tension, conflict, and frustration, but also love, gratitude, and admiration, things that I see reflected in my own relationship with my mother. Beyond feeling connected to the lost teenage girl, I find myself reading about my own mother, because that, essentially, is what pulls me towards this story. I am realizing that as much I love Francesca’s eclectic group of friends and the ebb and flow of her high school life, it is the dynamic between mother and daughter that really influences me the most.
It’s difficult to select just one book that has influenced me, because books themselves influence me; bookstores move me; old, worn pages inspire me. For E. M. Forster, “the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.” Good books come to you when you need them most, probably before you realize you need them, and deliver the advice, insight, catharsis, or laughter that you need at that moment. Forster describes the difference between being impressed by a book and being influenced by one, arguing that when you feel opened, extended by a book, that is not the same as being influenced by one. I agree that to be impressed by something is to be held at a distance by the space between great and ordinary, however I see no difference between being influenced by something and being extended. I feel both influenced and extended by the opening paragraph in John Steinbeck’s Cannery Row; as I read it, the subtle cadence of the words follows a steady beat in my mind.
I wish I could say that the book that has most influenced me is a story of an epic adventure or a passionate romance, or a complicated, dense novel a part of the English canon - Pride and Prejudice, The Grapes of Wrath, The Great Gatsby. While I have enjoyed all of these novels, when I think about a book that has really influenced me, I think of one that has made its way into a moving box each year and onto a shelf in a new dorm room or apartment, the book that I grab in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep or wake up from a bad dream, the book whose lines I prematurely recite in my head before I read them on the page.
I do not remember exactly when Melina Marchetta’s Saving Francesca came to me, probably one Christmas, while I was in high school - my mother has the uncanny ability to find books for me that I need before I am even aware that I need them. With the first page, I was dropped into Francesca’s world, recognizing the sadness and the sense of relief, “This morning, my mother didn’t get out of bed . . . There’s just silence. And for the first time all year, I go to school and my only agenda is to get to 3:15.”
I am usually drawn to well-developed characters, women who struggle but find strength, who are intelligent, witty, and flawed. Saving Francesca follows 16-year old Francesca, beginning the year at a new school, formerly all-male, unsure of where she fits in, suddenly bereft of her tight-knit group of friends, her sense of comfort, and her mother’s overbearing presence. It seems like it should follow the traditional formula of young adult novels, but somehow, this one shifts away. Usually parents are minor figures, on the periphery of their child’s story, but in this novel, the relationship between Francesca and her mother is woven into every chapter, and the novel itself is framed by her mother, her depression, and her recovery. Their relationship is full of tension, conflict, and frustration, but also love, gratitude, and admiration, things that I see reflected in my own relationship with my mother. Beyond feeling connected to the lost teenage girl, I find myself reading about my own mother, because that, essentially, is what pulls me towards this story. I am realizing that as much I love Francesca’s eclectic group of friends and the ebb and flow of her high school life, it is the dynamic between mother and daughter that really influences me the most.