REVIEW: On the Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta

5 of 5 Stars! - (Read March 2009)

I absolutely LOVED this book! Using a sentence from the book that sums up this story, for me:  

"I remember love."

Too simple? It's powerful, multi-faceted and complex, actually, just like love... and life... is. I was swept away on the journey with Taylor and the others, and I cried for what they lost and found. In the end, out of the tragedies and hardships of life, I was left with a feeling of love, hope and wonder, that I, along with the characters, discovered... on the Jellicoe Road. LOVED it!

Granted, it was a bit confusing in the beginning, with the story shifting between a different cast of characters, at different times. But then, the pieces started falling into place, and once I reached the end, I just thought, with tears in my eyes and my heart overflowing: "What an amazing story!"

I won't go into the plot as this is a story that one just has to discover in all its layers and complexities as it unfolds.

Melina Marchetta, an Aussie author and former teacher, is one of my favourite YA authors. Her characters feel so real, and the emotions she portrays are so genuine and raw, that her books are all special to me.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED and totally deserving of all the YA literature awards it won, in my humble opinion!

On the Jellicoe Road has one of the most powerful (and tragic) openings I have ever read...

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

I counted.

It happened on the Jellicoe Road. The prettiest road I’d ever seen, where trees made breezy canopies like a tunnel to Shangri-La. We were going to the ocean, hundreds of kilometres away, because I wanted to see the ocean and my father said that it was about time the four of us made that journey. I remember asking, “What’s the difference between a trip and a journey?” and my father said, “Narnie, my love, when we get there, you’ll understand,” and that was the last thing he ever said.

We heard her almost straight away. In the other car, wedged into ours so deep that you couldn’t tell where one began and the other ended. She told us her name was Tate and then she squeezed through the glass and the steel and climbed over her own dead – just to be with Webb and me; to give us her hand so we could clutch it with all our might. And then a kid called Fitz came riding by on a stolen bike and saved our lives.

Someone asked us later, “Didn’t you wonder why no one came across you sooner?”

Did I wonder?

When you see your parents zipped up in black body bags on the Jellicoe Road like they’re some kind of garbage, don’t you know?

Wonder dies."

*sniffles*

Favourite quotes:

"When I turn around, he cups my face in his hands and he kisses me so deeply that I don't know who is breathing for who, but his mouth and tongue taste like warm honey. I don't know how long it lasts, but when I let go of him, I miss it already."

""What do you want from me?" he asks.
What I want from every person in my life, I want to tell him.
More."

"He stops and looks at me. "I'm here because of you. You're my priority. Your happiness, in some fucked way, is tuned in to mine. Get that through your thick skull. Would I like it any other way? Hell, yes, but I don't think that will be happening in my lifetime.""

"My body becomes a raft and there's this part of me that wants just literally to go with the flow. To close my eyes and let it take me. But I know sooner or later I will have to get out, that I need to feel the earth beneath my feet, between my toes - the splinters, the bindi-eyes, the burning sensation of hot dirt, the sting of cuts, the twigs, the bites, the heat, the discomfort, the everything. I need desperately to feel it all, so when something wonderful happens, the contrast will be so massive that I will bottle the impact and keep it for the rest of my life."

"Hold my hand because I might disappear."

“Is a person worth more because they have someone to grieve for them?”

"It's funny how you can forget everything except people loving you. Maybe that's why humans find it so hard getting over love affairs. It's not the pain they're getting over, it's the love."