I loved Melina Marchetta's previous works, so when The Piper's Son was released a year ago in Australia with no US release date in sight, I preordered the book. 

I loved it. It took me a while to process; I reread it a few times. I finally wrote a review on Goodreads last July. I'm reposting it here – I stand by every word.

I was a bit wary of revisiting the world of Saving Francesca. I loved Saving Francesca. It was a not-too-heavy yet not-too-light well-written clever young adult novel about real teenagers. A badly done sequel might ruin the perfect reading experience of the novel preceding it. But I decided to trust Marchetta, who hasn't written a dud yet, and I ordered the novel from Australia.

This is, simply, Marchetta's most ambitious work (though it's not her best written). It's as if she sets out to undertake ever bigger chunks of the world in each novel. Here she writes about Tom, a character I hadn't liked very much before, and how he's dropped out of university and distanced himself from his friends. She doesn't tell you why initially. You're dropped into Tom's world and Tom's problems, and the events of the past five years are unfolded throughout the novel, one devastating detail at a time.

If I had to choose one word to describe The Piper's Son, it would be "raw". The book is oozing screaming pain. It's naked rage and bleeding hurt and an unsuccessful attempt to dull the agony. And then comes the real healing, the process of slowly letting the world back in.

The ambitious part of the novel, I think, is the way Marchetta deals with death. She never analyzes the culprit's motive, she makes no assessment of terrorism; she only examines the backlash of the attack perpetrated. Yet the very fact that she doesn't identify motive, that the terrorist is a virtually faceless person identified solely by his actions, she allows readers to draw their own conclusions, to ask their own questions. Marchetta doesn't spoonfeed or coddle her readers here. This is a tremendous emotional journey, and not an easy one.

It's definitely a worthwhile one, though. There are times when this book breaks the young adult barrier and becomes a book for people of any age who are looking for truth in writing.

That, I think, is what separates this book from Jellicoe Road. Jellicoe was an almost insular story about comparatively sheltered teenagers in their own little corner of existence. The Piper's Son is a teenager grown up and facing the world and its horrors with an as-yet-unnumbed pain at the seeming unfairness of it all.

It's not only Tom's story, though he is the linchpin that holds the book together. The Piper's Son looks at how family shapes a person, and how friends shape him, and how a person shapes himself. And then how unexpected events can shatter them all.

Available at your local bookstore (and hopefully your library) as of March 8, 2011. Read it. It's an unforgettable journey.