On the Jellicoe Road

By: Melina Marchetta

Narrated by: Rebecca Macauley

Length: 8 hrs and 52 mins

Publisher's summary

Winner of the 2009 Michael L. Printz Award for excellence in Young Adult literature.

A highly anticipated follow-up from the best-selling author of Looking for Alibrandi and Saving Francesca, both highly acclaimed productions available from Bolinda Audio.

Taylor Markham is now a senior at the Jellicoe School, and has been made leader of the boarders. She is responsible for keeping the upper hand in the territory wars with the townies, and the cadets who camp on the edge of the school's property over summer. She has to keep her students safe and the territories enforced and to deal with Jonah Griggs - the leader of the cadets and someone she'd rather forget. But what she needs to do, more than anything, is unravel the mystery of her past and find her mother - who abandoned her on the Jellicoe Road six years before. The only connection to her past, Hannah, the woman who found her, has now disappeared, too, and he only clue Taylor has about Hannah and her mother's past is a partially written manuscript about a group of five kids from the Jellicoe School, 20 years ago.

©2008 Melina Marchetta (P)2006 Bolinda Publishing

Critic reviews

2009 American Library Association Michael L. Printz Award, for excellence in literature written by young adults.

Difficult Start, Great Ending

Jellico started out painfully slowly with no sense of where the story is going. After an hour I put it down and didn’t pick it up for over a year. After three hours I was considering deleting it even though I have a rule about always finishing books. That first was just sucha chore, I thought it could be the first to go.

It wasn’t necessarily a bad or even badly told story; it was just seemed so murky and muddled. The story-within-a-story interludes were as yet unframed, the goals of Taylor (the lead) were still unknown and the initial set up (the ‘war’ between three groups of teens that live or study by the Jellico road) was confusing and, as such, uninteresting. I’m all for a story unfolding, for pieces of information deftly doled out at the right moments etc but the first third seemed like it belong to a different story or at least set up a completely different story.

The first three hours were about that ‘war’ but that is not what the book is about and event thought eh story provides more than one could-be ‘resolution’, the conflict is simply dropped when the real story got going.

The protracted set-up gave an opportunity to tease a few things and start setting up the real story but since I had no idea what the real story was, the tid-bits, flashback, allusions and interludes left me confused and bored.

Jellico road is essentially a story a story of two generations of friends who form/ed unbreakable bonds. It becomes about Taylors search for family, love and understanding. When it does – it is utterly fabulous. I just can’t help but think that if it were only framed like that from the beginning it would have been solid gold.

By the last third of the book, the interludes/flashbacks are breathtaking in their revelations and I got excited every time I heard the music that signalled the change (as opposed to considering fast-forwarding them in the first third).

I guess you just have to go with the book and trust where it will take you but it’s the second novel in a row that I feel did not frame the ultimate story early enough for me to be invested from the beginning. It’s also the second in a row I’ve picked back up a year after dumping it – not a coincidence.

All I can say is if you like powerful emotional dramas, family sagas or intergenerational searches for love, family and hope than the Jellico Road is a wonderful book so stick it out. The end was so utterly emotional I had to lock myself in the bathroom at work to finish it because I couldn’t leave it or sob at my desk.

I don’t know how international readers will take the Australian story and the Aussie narrator. I AM Australian so I found a lot of the stereotypes, characters and idioms accurate to the point of uncomfortable. Somehow though, I still found the narrator’s accent grating (I just kept wondering if that is what I sound like?!)

Overall, I strongly recommend Jellico Road and it is times like this I remember why I have my ‘always finish’ rule!

love this book

I love this story, but the music between chapters is a bit annoying. the reading is fine however.

Simply a must-read kind of book!

What did you love best about On the Jellicoe Road?

From the first breathtaking sentence to the very last chapter, it was a brilliantly moving and non-sentimental book about being a teenager, and finding friends, life and family sometimes easy, sometimes too hard to bear.

Any additional comments?

A very good performance. Made each character even more believable, and every line even more heartfelt. Couldn't have been better!

The most unique book I've ever read! AMAZING

Would you listen to On the Jellicoe Road again? Why?

I have already listened to On the Jellicoe Road many many times. I find something new every time I listen to the book because there are so many twists and turns.

What did you like best about this story?

I really enjoy the mystery aspect of the story. It is done in such an amazing way that you want to know everything right away, but it keeps you guessing until the end.

Any additional comments?

Jellicoe Road has been my favorite book for many years, and I want everyone to experience this book as well.

Way, way, WAY too sad

Depressing :( Not enough happiness to balance the sadness. If you don’t mind a constant feeling of depression, the story is interesting.

The kids are not alright

Glowing reviews from other people have tricked me into believing this was the next best thing in YA since "Catcher in the rye". Oh, how deceived I was.

So what's not to like on the Jellicoe Road? To start off most of the characters are supposed to be 17-ish something, but their real maturity level is more of 10 year old kids. Their main concern is looking tough and playing imaginary wars. Why are they doing it? No one knows and no one cares to even think about it. Actually there's hardly any thinking taking place in the heads of those children at all.

The main girl, Taylor, is especially annoying because of her constant self-absortion, hostile mood swings and "I want my mommy but I won't admit it to anyone". Honestly I wished to smack her headfirst into a wall of bricks more than on one occasion.

Lastly, narration was below average. The main voice was unpleasant to listen to as it always seemed to be on the verge of hysteria. For example the same tone was used to describe a serene view from the top of the tree and when someone attacked the character. In dialogs it was very hard to discern who spoke what because all of them used the same tones. Really frustrating.

No.

The author is talking about things as if we were there, so I am not able to make sense of a lot of things in the story. The narrator has an Australian accent and the story has Australian words for things. Hard to listen to and hard to make sense of the story.