On the Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“Maybe memories should be left the way they are.”- On the Jellicoe Road, Melina Marchetta 

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.

Firstly, I have no idea what to call this book. It was originally published as On the Jellicoe Road in its native Australia, and I think in England as well, but in America it was retitled to Jellicoe Road, for reasons I don't know and probably weren't very good in the first place since in my personal opinion On the Jellicoe Road flows better. It's like the opposite of what happened to I Am the Messenger. After much hesitation (read: 5 second deliberation) I went with On the Jellicoe Road because the novel is more widely known under that title and when I want to sound all cool and English Major-y I'll abbreviate it as Jellicoe Road. Or Jellicoe Rad, if I type it too quickly and forget the o. It's cold here, so my fingers are a little frozen.

Anyway, I honestly haven't wished I liked any book more than I actually did more than this book. I figured I would love it, that it would emotionally impact me and I would laugh and cry and the writing would be beautiful and I would immediately begin searching out everything Melina Marchetta ever wrote. That didn't happen. I think the last time I felt this way was when I read We Were Liars, and thought it was only okay. 

I first heard about this book a few years ago. The plot intrigued me, and I liked the title, so I filed it away for later. By the time later came around, I had been fully absorbed in the worlds of Goodreads, book blogs, and BookTube, and this book in particular made quite a few favorite books of all time lists. So I renewed my interest for it and, on a recent library run, picked this book up along with Daughter of Smoke and Bone, The Passion of Dolssa, Cinder, and a few other books I should have read years ago but didn't. Also, when I re-encountered this book, I realized that the author was Australian and I was fully aware of the amazingness of most YA Aussie authors, from Markus Zusak (who is a God among authors, really) to Scot Gardner to Lucy Christopher to Randa Abdel-Fattah. They write contemporary the way contemporary should be written. So, when I wasn't automatically sucked into this book, I was disappointed. And when I was about 50 pages in and still not in love, I was beginning to question whether or not I was broken.

Maybe my first mistake was starting this book the same day I finished Marina. Ah, Marina, the book that caught my attention from the very first page, the book whose characters captured my heart and whose plot captured my imagination. But I realized this, and when I wasn't immediately taken with this book I figured I was just in a book hangover and should have found something A List of Cages-esque. Or maybe try to finish The Cellist of Sarajevo. I found myself shying away from this book every time I reached near it, always detouring away to pick up my iPad and watch YouTube instead. Ironically, it was mostly BookTube. But this morning, I finally sat my ass down and blew through the last 300 pages in one sitting. I was underwhelmed. 

There was so much filler, and the mystery felt dragged. Perhaps it felt dragged because around 100 pages in and once I grasped enough of Narnie and Webb and Tate and Fitz and Jude, I placed my bets as to which character each of them ended up being. I got five for five, in case you were wondering. But Marchetta isn't Tana French, I'm afraid. While it's true with French's work that I did guess who it was two times out of three, I still held onto the story because I wasn't sure if I was right or not, and because it was a murder, I wanted to know how it happened and what the motive was. In this book, it seemed fairly obvious to me who everyone was, and the entire book seemed like Taylor, our main character, was just trying to catch up, making me (unintentionally, I swear!) think she was a bit slow. 

And while I like the idea of there being a war between the Townies, the Students, and the Cadets, it got in the way of central mystery. This is also a very busy book, and that just made the central plot seem muddy and made me feel bored and restless. My eyes were jumping all over the page, looking for something that happened that had to do with the kids from the 80s, who by far had the more interesting story and felt the most developed. If all the extra stuff was cut out, and this book was just about Taylor trying to find her parents, or about Taylor trying to uncover the mystery of these teens from the 80s, then it would be spectacular. But no, we had to get in the turf war and then the romance and a whole bunch of other stuff I just didn't care about. Hell, I wouldn't even have minded if the book was just Hannah's manuscript or just about those characters, because I wanted more from them. I didn't care about Taylor, who felt underdeveloped. In my notes, I put down that it was rare I care more about the plot than the characters, but that in this case I did. The parts with the manuscript excerpts were fascinating and engrossing, as well as some of the more contemporary-seeming parts with Taylor and her group of friends. Those parts brought back glimmers of the summer-y, nostalgic feeling I get when reading certain really good contemporaries, like The Lies About Truth or Invincible Summer or I Am the Messenger. But those feelings didn't really stay with me consistently, the way they had with the above books. They would be there for maybe a paragraph or two, and then flit off, just leaving me disappointed and just wanting Taylor to catch up and solve the mystery so the book can be over.

But the writing was pretty even if it did make my head hurt at times, and the ending was nice. I ended this book feeling solidly okay. There are glimmers of a good story here, just too much filler. I felt like this to the point where I felt motivated to write a summary of how the plot should have been treated. Here it is:

After her mother abandons her, 17 year old Taylor Markham finds herself living with Hannah, the woman whom her mother appointed as her guardian on the Jellicoe Road. One day, she discovers a manuscript Hannah has been writing about a group of teenagers living on the road in the 1980s. She meets a group of cadets who go to Jellicoe Road as a training camp, and their enigmatic leader, known only as the Brigadier, who seems to have a strange but strong connection with Hannah. With the help of Raffy and Santangelo, two kids she meets in town, as well as Santangelo's younger foster sister Jessa, and cadet Jonah Griggs, she works to uncover the mysteries of Jellicoe Road, along with the mystery of her mother. 

To me, that would have packed the same emotional punch that this book had and would have been far more centered overall. Hell, maybe someday I'll write a story like that. But for what we got, I didn't hate it, and I can see why so many people loved it. I just wish I was in that group of people. Recommended for a YA contemporary fan, if just to read the book that can probably be considered the definitive YA Aussie novel. I still want to read another well loved Aussie contemporary- maybe Graffiti Moon?

7.5 out of 10