Customer Reviews

Frannie in Pieces (Laura Geringer Books)

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Length:: 2:39 Mins

Saving the blues for last is a wonderful subtitle for this teen novel, on a number of levels. The 15-year old protagonist, Frannie, loses her father to a sudden heart attack. Amongst his belongings, she finds a 1000-piece, handmade puzzle he has left behind, presumably for her. Drawn into its mesmerizing assembly, she literally saves the hardest part - the blue pieces of the sky and water - for last, and in the process, discovers her divorced parents' love affair, works through her grief, her blues, and comes through complete. The novel makes you cry and laugh at the same time, just as Delia Ephron's famous books and films for adults have done (Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail, Hanging Up, and more).

What does you in-brain or heart? Frannie asks herself this question when, a week before she turns fifteen, her dad dies, leaving her suddenly deprived of the only person on Earth she feels understands her. She discovers an elegant wooden box with an inscription: Frances Anne 1000. Inside, Frannie finds one thousand hand-carved and painted puzzle pieces. Feeling broken herself, she slowly puts the puzzle together, bit by bit. But as she works, something happens. She's pulled into a foreign landscape, a place suspended in time where she discovers her father as he was B.F.-before Frannie.
This story moved like a piece of a puzzle. Confusing at first, but piece by piece the reader finally gets the whole picture of why the puzzle was so important to the father.
Frannie's emotions bounce around from page to page. I felt the author did do a good job of showing the struggle Frannie felt when her father died and trying to make sense of it all. Her friend Jenna was a little too ditsy though. What friend really blows off someone who's father just died? I didn't believe it.
A fast paced read that is hard to put down. You can't help but want to follow Frannie as she discovers not only more about her beloved father but about herself as well.

I admit I got this hoping it would be funny, so I was somewhat disappointed when it was more mellow. It's a good YA book in general though not very remarkable, in my opinion. I found myself a little bored, but then again I've sort of grown out of the genre now that I'm no longer in high school. I'm sure someone younger who can relate to Frannie will enjoy it more than I did.