Reading on the Jellicoe Road ...

Oh. My. God. On the Jellicoe Road is such a fantastic book by Melina Marchetta [who also wrote Looking For Alibrandi]. You've just GOT to read it. The book is confusing [to the point that I actually dropped it and thought I couldn't take it any more. Lucky for me, I did pick it up again!] in the beginning, but as you progress through it, everything actually makes sense!! And the pieces all fit in together, like a jigsaw puzzle. I actually thought that this was one the books where the author, so ecstatic about making up a name [like "Jellicoe"], uses it so often that it gets really irritating. But I was pleasantly surprised, because Ms. Marchetta doesn't do that. Phew!

Anyways, this is the official blurb on the back of the book:

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 the 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.

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I give it ***** !!


p.s.: A word on John Jellicoe. He joined the Royal Navy as a cadet in 1872. [Got this from Wiki when I searched for "Jellicoe" because it's an interesting word] Might be an inspiration for this book? I've no idea!