Review: On the Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta

Title: On the Jellicoe Road
Author: Melina Marchetta
My rating: 5 of 5 Stars

SUMMARY
I'm dreaming of the boy in the tree. I tell him stories. About the Jellicoe School and the Townies and the Cadets from a school in Sydney. I tell him about the war between us for territory. And I tell him about Hannah, who lives in the unfinished house by the river. Hannah, who is too young to be hiding away from the world. Hannah, who found me on the Jellicoe Road six years ago.

Taylor is leader of the boarders at the Jellicoe School. She has to keep the upper hand in the territory wars and deal with Jonah Griggs—the enigmatic leader of the cadets, and someone she thought she would never see again.

And now Hannah, the person Taylor had come to rely on, has disappeared. Taylor's only clue is a manuscript about five kids who lived in Jellicoe eighteen years ago. She needs to find out more, but this means confronting her own story, making sense of her strange, recurring dream, and finding her mother—who abandoned her on the Jellicoe Road.

MY THOUGHTS

I can’t write a coherent review right now. Probably ever. My mind is a tangle of thoughts and emotions. Melina Marchetta, what have you done to me?

This book is so achingly sad. This sadness seeped into my heart gradually. One drop after another, and then BAM! And it was overwhelming, and I couldn’t take it anymore, and I couldn’t breathe, and I was crying , crying…

Many reviewers mentioned that at first On the Jellicoe Road was very confusing, and that they straggled with the beginning of the book. So I braced myself for this, but it never came. I was under Marchetta’s spell from the first sentence. Opening line that gripped me right away:

"My father took one hundred and thirty-two minutes to die. I counted."

Melina Marchetta’s writing is beautiful and after I turned the last page I had a strong urge to open the book again and start from the beginning. This story has haunting quality; I can’t stop thinking about it.

And her characters, these wonderful broken characters. I loved them. Each of them has a special spot in my heart.

This book resonated with me on such deep level. There was something cathartic in reading it.

If you haven’t read On the Jellicoe Road yet, do it right now. And I dare you not to fell in love with this beautiful and heartbreaking story.