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4.22 AVERAGE
4.22 AVERAGE
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
I read this book in Norwegian.
I found the opening a little bit confusing with the initial timelapse even though it is shown with italics. The book read easily, but half-way in I felt like I knew what would happen with the rest of the book, and that it therefore would be boring.
I am very glad I finished reading it despite this feeling. It wasn't that I was wrong, it was more that the well-written way of the book managed to play on the right feelings and heart strings, and it feels like it is a book that will stay with me for a long time.
I am really glad I read it and would recommend it to any YA and open-minded adult.
I found the opening a little bit confusing with the initial timelapse even though it is shown with italics. The book read easily, but half-way in I felt like I knew what would happen with the rest of the book, and that it therefore would be boring.
I am very glad I finished reading it despite this feeling. It wasn't that I was wrong, it was more that the well-written way of the book managed to play on the right feelings and heart strings, and it feels like it is a book that will stay with me for a long time.
I am really glad I read it and would recommend it to any YA and open-minded adult.
There are books that you read. And then there are books that you inhabit-- that the characters sink deep into your soul and claw all your emotions to shreds.
I've read Marchetta's Fantasy, Finnikin of the Rock, and felt how she creates real, vibrant characters and then runs them through emotional wringers. Her fantasy made me think of Guy Gavriel Kay and Kristin Cashore in the way she uses death, honor, and love to teach us things about ourselves.
This non-fantasy, contemporary fiction makes me think a comparison to John Green would be more apt. If you like his books, you'll like Marchetta's.
On the Jellicoe Road isn't an easy book to read-- and I love it for that. It throws you into the world of 5 friends, past 5 friends, and present, different 5 friends, without warning or explanation and leaves you to figure out who is narrating and slowly discover the connections between them in the same way eating a long-simmered beef stew allows you to discover layers of rich flavor.
Taylor lives in a boarding school on Jellicoe Road. She has just become the leader of the school's Houses despite everyone else thinking she's unfit for the job. The welfare (and boundaries) of the younger students are now her responsibility, when she already has issues like a mother who abandoned her when she was 11, and a foster-mother figure who has disappeared without a trace just when Taylor needs her most. Because as leader, Taylor's not only responsible for the younger students' getting assignments done, keeping a convicted arsonist in check, and dealing with homesickness, but she also must keep the boundaries safe against the Townies and the Cadets (camped there for the summer)in a traditional battle between teen age factions that started long ago.
Taylor, the Townie leader, and the Cadet leader all have a past that will lead them towards each other and to Taylor discovering the truth about who she is and how she fits into the world.
Marchetta scatters poetic bits of truth throughout the book that could take an entire book to unpack but that Marchetta just throws out in an offhand way, like in this description of girls in Taylor's House just hanging out: "What kind of a freak is this kid who's giggling histerically with the girls in the neighboring beds, each with a crush on each other for being the same age when the rest of the world seems so old?" or Taylor watching a mother-daughter moment her friend Raffy is having "It's not that I miss my mother. It's just that I miss the idea of what one would be."
So Taylor's probably a bit wise above her years, and in other books that would bug me, but in the inexplicable way that Marchetta writes Taylor never comes across as undeservedly wise above her years. She has a past that explains some of her maturity, and an aching kind of yearning that speaks to the adolescent in all of us.
There are two scenes near the end that involve a bit of sex I probably wouldn't want elementary or young middle schoolers to encounter quite yet, but the rest of the book is so rich, so full of angst and love and yearning that I can't wait until my 6th grader is old enough to read it.
I've read Marchetta's Fantasy, Finnikin of the Rock, and felt how she creates real, vibrant characters and then runs them through emotional wringers. Her fantasy made me think of Guy Gavriel Kay and Kristin Cashore in the way she uses death, honor, and love to teach us things about ourselves.
This non-fantasy, contemporary fiction makes me think a comparison to John Green would be more apt. If you like his books, you'll like Marchetta's.
On the Jellicoe Road isn't an easy book to read-- and I love it for that. It throws you into the world of 5 friends, past 5 friends, and present, different 5 friends, without warning or explanation and leaves you to figure out who is narrating and slowly discover the connections between them in the same way eating a long-simmered beef stew allows you to discover layers of rich flavor.
Taylor lives in a boarding school on Jellicoe Road. She has just become the leader of the school's Houses despite everyone else thinking she's unfit for the job. The welfare (and boundaries) of the younger students are now her responsibility, when she already has issues like a mother who abandoned her when she was 11, and a foster-mother figure who has disappeared without a trace just when Taylor needs her most. Because as leader, Taylor's not only responsible for the younger students' getting assignments done, keeping a convicted arsonist in check, and dealing with homesickness, but she also must keep the boundaries safe against the Townies and the Cadets (camped there for the summer)in a traditional battle between teen age factions that started long ago.
Taylor, the Townie leader, and the Cadet leader all have a past that will lead them towards each other and to Taylor discovering the truth about who she is and how she fits into the world.
Marchetta scatters poetic bits of truth throughout the book that could take an entire book to unpack but that Marchetta just throws out in an offhand way, like in this description of girls in Taylor's House just hanging out: "What kind of a freak is this kid who's giggling histerically with the girls in the neighboring beds, each with a crush on each other for being the same age when the rest of the world seems so old?" or Taylor watching a mother-daughter moment her friend Raffy is having "It's not that I miss my mother. It's just that I miss the idea of what one would be."
So Taylor's probably a bit wise above her years, and in other books that would bug me, but in the inexplicable way that Marchetta writes Taylor never comes across as undeservedly wise above her years. She has a past that explains some of her maturity, and an aching kind of yearning that speaks to the adolescent in all of us.
There are two scenes near the end that involve a bit of sex I probably wouldn't want elementary or young middle schoolers to encounter quite yet, but the rest of the book is so rich, so full of angst and love and yearning that I can't wait until my 6th grader is old enough to read it.
I'm not sure what I missed while reading this that almost everyone else saw. The reviews on this are generally really good, and that's what kept me reading while I was confused and disliking it for the first half of the book. I read how it got so much better, how everyone cried and cried, and I was convinced that if I just got past the first part, I would really like it.
Well, not so much. I could never bring myself to care about anything. Didn't so much as feel even a little sad. Maybe I'm just heartless. I don't know, but this book did nothing for me.
Well, not so much. I could never bring myself to care about anything. Didn't so much as feel even a little sad. Maybe I'm just heartless. I don't know, but this book did nothing for me.
Not usually a contemporary fiction fan, but this book was amazing. The intricate plot reminded me of a Diana Wynne Jones book and there was a sense of mystery that reminded me of fantasy in general. At the same time because it is a contemporary fiction book and these could be real people, their messes felt more poignant.
My criticisms of this book are definitely a mixture of Me problems and Book problems — things I personally didn't like and things that I think are genuinely not good about the book. I was going to try to split them out but I'm not sure how helpful that would be, so I'll just run through them all here.
-The book doesn't give you a lot of clues to orient yourself, so it's hard to follow at first. I don't necessarily mind this in a book — sometimes it's fun to try to piece things together — but it's a solid third of the way through the book before you have any kind of clue WTF is going on. That was far too long for me and kept me from feeling connected to the main character because I couldn't understand her motives for a lot of what she did, much of which was being terrible to other people.
-Once the pieces did start falling into place, I found it to be disappointingly predictable. I figured out who the Brigadier was chapters before Taylor did. If it was supposed to be a mystery, it didn't play out like one — it was more like everything was a confusing jumble, so I didn't even know what I was looking at, and then suddenly it all came into focus and I was just waiting for Taylor to catch up.
-The writing felt much more like telling than showing. It was very choppy, a lot of "This happened and then this happened and then this person said this." This meant that the romance felt underdeveloped and I had no real reason to root for them to get together or stay together, and the fact that they were either jumping each other or screaming at each other felt disconnected to any actual passion.
-Also, Jonah is kind of a terrible person at the opening of the book, and he never really redeems himself. It's more like a combination of Taylor remembering him at his most vulnerable + he behaves like a halfway-decent person for a while. The characters are constantly throwing one-liners at each other, so we don't see who they are as individuals. At one point we're told something like, "Jonah said some witty things to the girls," which just felt like lazy writing to me — tell us what the witty things were, and maybe we'll get some sense of his personality?
-The underdeveloped writing also extended to plotting. One example: Taylor's bike gets stolen. Then there's a chapter where she's riding her bike into enemy territory. Then later her bike turns up again. We get no explanation — Was this a flashback? Did she borrow someone else's bike? No idea. Another example: The kids all get in the car together and they're driving and driving and Taylor is settling into the back seat and watching the colors go by the window, until she sees something and makes them all stop. When they get back in the car, the driver says, "Where should we go?" and they have a whole discussion about it and then start driving again. There's no reason that conversation couldn't have happened before they started driving initially, and it's unclear where exactly they were planning to drive to in the first place before they screeched to a halt and then had a conversation about it. This contributed to the feeling of being lost while reading, and it didn't feel intentional, just sloppy.
-I am not a fan of magical realism, so all the pieces with the boy in the tree in Taylor's dream and how she named herself before she was born were a little eye-roll-y to me.
I actually really liked the idea behind the book and I think I would have genuinely liked the book a lot had it been executed better. There's a sweet message about found family and laying aside differences and how we can come to terms with the past and move forward. And the interweaving of Hannah's book, as Taylor's reading it out of order, was a clever device. It was just unfortunate that we're told at the very beginning that Taylor's story opens "twenty-two years later" than the start of Hannah's story, because otherwise we, like Taylor, might think it was fictional until the coincidences with real life start happening.
So, on the whole, I didn't hate the book, and I can understand why people like it (I was even tearing up a little bit at the end), but in general it was hard to get through and not enjoyable for me personally.
-The book doesn't give you a lot of clues to orient yourself, so it's hard to follow at first. I don't necessarily mind this in a book — sometimes it's fun to try to piece things together — but it's a solid third of the way through the book before you have any kind of clue WTF is going on. That was far too long for me and kept me from feeling connected to the main character because I couldn't understand her motives for a lot of what she did, much of which was being terrible to other people.
-Once the pieces did start falling into place, I found it to be disappointingly predictable. I figured out who the Brigadier was chapters before Taylor did. If it was supposed to be a mystery, it didn't play out like one — it was more like everything was a confusing jumble, so I didn't even know what I was looking at, and then suddenly it all came into focus and I was just waiting for Taylor to catch up.
-The writing felt much more like telling than showing. It was very choppy, a lot of "This happened and then this happened and then this person said this." This meant that the romance felt underdeveloped and I had no real reason to root for them to get together or stay together, and the fact that they were either jumping each other or screaming at each other felt disconnected to any actual passion.
-Also, Jonah is kind of a terrible person at the opening of the book, and he never really redeems himself. It's more like a combination of Taylor remembering him at his most vulnerable + he behaves like a halfway-decent person for a while. The characters are constantly throwing one-liners at each other, so we don't see who they are as individuals. At one point we're told something like, "Jonah said some witty things to the girls," which just felt like lazy writing to me — tell us what the witty things were, and maybe we'll get some sense of his personality?
-The underdeveloped writing also extended to plotting. One example: Taylor's bike gets stolen. Then there's a chapter where she's riding her bike into enemy territory. Then later her bike turns up again. We get no explanation — Was this a flashback? Did she borrow someone else's bike? No idea. Another example: The kids all get in the car together and they're driving and driving and Taylor is settling into the back seat and watching the colors go by the window, until she sees something and makes them all stop. When they get back in the car, the driver says, "Where should we go?" and they have a whole discussion about it and then start driving again. There's no reason that conversation couldn't have happened before they started driving initially, and it's unclear where exactly they were planning to drive to in the first place before they screeched to a halt and then had a conversation about it. This contributed to the feeling of being lost while reading, and it didn't feel intentional, just sloppy.
-I am not a fan of magical realism, so all the pieces with the boy in the tree in Taylor's dream and how she named herself before she was born were a little eye-roll-y to me.
I actually really liked the idea behind the book and I think I would have genuinely liked the book a lot had it been executed better. There's a sweet message about found family and laying aside differences and how we can come to terms with the past and move forward. And the interweaving of Hannah's book, as Taylor's reading it out of order, was a clever device. It was just unfortunate that we're told at the very beginning that Taylor's story opens "twenty-two years later" than the start of Hannah's story, because otherwise we, like Taylor, might think it was fictional until the coincidences with real life start happening.
So, on the whole, I didn't hate the book, and I can understand why people like it (I was even tearing up a little bit at the end), but in general it was hard to get through and not enjoyable for me personally.
I think I'm officially in love with Melina Marchetta. Granted, I've only read three of her books, and one of them was Saving Francesca, which I didn't love. But honestly, I truly love Marchetta's writing. If I were to spend the rest of my days reading more and more books written by her, I could die happy.
At first, I honestly didn't think I would end up even liking On the Jellicoe Road all that much. I couldn't really connect to Taylor, and for a while I felt like the whole "territory war" aspect made no sense to me. But, I had caught onto the fact that Marchetta is a show-not-tell kind of author -- and you have NO idea how much that pleases me, after reading book after book of authors explaining everything in a character's life as if it were a biography. I love that the plot and information presents itself to the reader organically, and not as if it were being given as a summary. In this book, I came to find the same level of intricacy and layering that made me fall in love with The Piper's Son.
I also came to really love Taylor, with all of her issues and problems. Even more so than the main character, I found myself in love with all the other characters. If there's one thing Marchetta does well, it's creating a cast of complex, intriguing, AMAZING characters that haunt you long after you finish the book. The snippets from Hannah's manuscript placed throughout the novel were absolute genius, and I don't think there was one central character that I didn't end up liking in this book. Raffy, Santangelo, Jessa, Hannah, Tate, Webb, Jude, Fitz, Ben. JONAH FREAKING GRIGGS. I adored them all.
I also didn't expect to cry over this book, but the last few pages had me sobbing. To be quite honest, I don't even know what I'm saying in this review. Once I finished the book, I actually had to just lie back and take a few deep breaths to reflect on what I'd just read. I've also just realized that I've used the word "love" about a bajillion times in this review, so that goes to show you how I feel about it. I get it. I'm rambling now. My ultimate point: If you haven't picked up this book yet, what are you waiting for?!
At first, I honestly didn't think I would end up even liking On the Jellicoe Road all that much. I couldn't really connect to Taylor, and for a while I felt like the whole "territory war" aspect made no sense to me. But, I had caught onto the fact that Marchetta is a show-not-tell kind of author -- and you have NO idea how much that pleases me, after reading book after book of authors explaining everything in a character's life as if it were a biography. I love that the plot and information presents itself to the reader organically, and not as if it were being given as a summary. In this book, I came to find the same level of intricacy and layering that made me fall in love with The Piper's Son.
I also came to really love Taylor, with all of her issues and problems. Even more so than the main character, I found myself in love with all the other characters. If there's one thing Marchetta does well, it's creating a cast of complex, intriguing, AMAZING characters that haunt you long after you finish the book. The snippets from Hannah's manuscript placed throughout the novel were absolute genius, and I don't think there was one central character that I didn't end up liking in this book. Raffy, Santangelo, Jessa, Hannah, Tate, Webb, Jude, Fitz, Ben. JONAH FREAKING GRIGGS. I adored them all.
I also didn't expect to cry over this book, but the last few pages had me sobbing. To be quite honest, I don't even know what I'm saying in this review. Once I finished the book, I actually had to just lie back and take a few deep breaths to reflect on what I'd just read. I've also just realized that I've used the word "love" about a bajillion times in this review, so that goes to show you how I feel about it. I get it. I'm rambling now. My ultimate point: If you haven't picked up this book yet, what are you waiting for?!
I have to say that I wish I were better with words so that I could adequately describe how I felt about this book. It started off so confusingly. For the first 100 pages or so I can't say that I really understood what was going on. But the hints of beauty in that confusion kept me going.
Melina Marchetta has an amazing way with words. Her words were so simple and yet they were put together in a way that was captivating. Her characters were so realistic and flawed and lovable. Even the characters you didn't like too much in the beginning you liked at least a little in the end.
I loved the way the 'war games' seemed so real and yet so fun. I would have loved to have done something like this at that age. It kind of made me wish I went to a boarding school. lol One minute they were negotiating territories and the next they arguing about what happened in the second grade.
Taylor was a great character to follow. And I loved to follow the story of her parents and their friends as well. It was a great way to find out where she came from and how she turned out the way she did. Her life before Jellicoe was not nice or pretty. But she found a way to overcome it anyway. At Jellicoe she found herself as well as her family.
I'm not ashamed to admit that I cried. Especially as I pieced together exactly what happened to everyone. Web, Fitz, Taylor, Griggs... All of them had a story that was told here. All of them were changed at Jellicoe Road. Some good, some bad. It's just life. This book will definitely go down as one of my all time favorites.
Melina Marchetta has an amazing way with words. Her words were so simple and yet they were put together in a way that was captivating. Her characters were so realistic and flawed and lovable. Even the characters you didn't like too much in the beginning you liked at least a little in the end.
I loved the way the 'war games' seemed so real and yet so fun. I would have loved to have done something like this at that age. It kind of made me wish I went to a boarding school. lol One minute they were negotiating territories and the next they arguing about what happened in the second grade.
Taylor was a great character to follow. And I loved to follow the story of her parents and their friends as well. It was a great way to find out where she came from and how she turned out the way she did. Her life before Jellicoe was not nice or pretty. But she found a way to overcome it anyway. At Jellicoe she found herself as well as her family.
I'm not ashamed to admit that I cried. Especially as I pieced together exactly what happened to everyone. Web, Fitz, Taylor, Griggs... All of them had a story that was told here. All of them were changed at Jellicoe Road. Some good, some bad. It's just life. This book will definitely go down as one of my all time favorites.
Maybe 4.5; There is a lot going on in this, but that's one reason why I liked it. The complexity of the stories and characters respects readers. This is one of those stories where the amount of tragedy is over-the-top, but I'll admit that it worked for me- yes, I cried.