Author Melina Marchetta, author of five books including the award-winning 1992 young adult fiction novel Looking
for Alibrandi, appeared at Fullers Bookshop in Hobart in March to promote her new book The Piper's Son.
Sydney resident Marchetta described the novel as a difficult one to write. 'Technically, it was easy to write,
but emotionally it was hard.'
Melina spoke at length of her concern at getting her characters right, relating an incident from the time
she worked as a teacher and had just written the first draft of one of her novels. A student came into her office
with a novel he was studying. I asked him what he thought of the novel and he replied he didn't like the fact that
'she thinks she knows our voice'. Impressed with his insight, Marchetta asked if he'd mind reading her manuscript.
He said yes, he'd do it. 'I made him promise that he would not leave his house with the manuscript, not take
it out and about with him, and he promised me that. But then his twin brother came to see me two days later and
said to me, "I really loved your book Miss". I said, "You weren't supposed to read it", to which he replied
"No you said it wasn't to leave our house." Then their friend came a couple of days later and told me how he
loved it too. And the great thing was – they were very cheeky – they came to me with ten pages of notes of what I'd
done wrong.'
'They wouldn't hand over the notes unless I gave them a free period. I was more desperate for those notes than I'd
have been to get notes from my editor, I wanted to know what they had to say. And they were pretty brutal. And
some of their suggestions I used and some I didn't.'
'I know one of those boys really well, he'd be twenty-four or so now. He was at my book launch the other day:
he reads every one of my manuscripts and still gives me feedback.'