On the Jellicoe Road

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and can i just say how my heart went out to jude, who was so like my beloved jude the obscure - who just wanted so badly to be let into christminster/the tragic bond the other kids had forged on the old jellicoe road?? i mean, he ended up better than hardy's jude, but still - the yearning!! you have my heart, jude. The boy likes to hear Taylor's stories about living at the Jellicoe School, especially the school's war with the Townies and the Cadets from the Sydney military school. Wham Line: "And then he told me to close my eyes. And I think I've been afraid to do just that, ever since." Taylor, after the Hermit killed himself in front of her. Taylor's past is filled with abandonment, grief and pain. When her caretaker at school, Hannah, the only adult she trusts, leaves unexpectedly Taylor has a need to know where Hannah could be and in doing so also finds out other unexpected truths.

The Chew Toy: Ben, who's constantly belittled and abused by the House captains, when he isn't getting beaten up by the Cadets. To top all of Taylor’s problems off, there is a territory war going on between the boarders, the Townies (kids from the Jellicoe Town) and the Cadets (Sydney boys who come for a six-week training exercise every year to Jellicoe). The leader of the cadets this year happens to be the very boy who Taylor ran away with when she was 14 in search of her mother. The one who betrayed her trust and she never wants to see again. Self-Made Orphan: Played half-straight. Jonah killed his father, but his mother's still alive. The bastard deserved it, though. The structure of Jellicoe Road—in which the present-tense, first-person narration in Taylor's unique voice is supplemented by passages from Hannah's manuscript—lends mystery and suspense to the story. Readers are given the opportunity to piece together clues to solve the puzzle at the same pace as the young heroine. Taylor says that her first strategy as leader is to get the Townies to side with the Jellicoe School faction. While pretty much everyone disagrees with this idea, Taylor reminds them that they've lost a considerable amount of territory in the last few years, leaving everything split pretty much between the other two sides.Taylor tries to balance this responsibility with her own worries about Hannah's sudden disappearance and her belief that it is connected to her mother. On top of that, there's her relationship with Jonah Griggs, one of the Cadets and a boy from her past, who knows her a little too much for comfort.

The kids walk Taylor down the hall, where she sees some girls peeking through their doors at her. One of them is her best friend, Raffaela, whom she's known since Taylor first came to Jellicoe School. And she was. It ties up beautifully in the end, and there's a scene which even made me shed a tear -- me, who has not cried since THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE (three tears) and while writing my second novel SHIVER (one tear from each eye) -- and I'm left feeling just about cheerful about everything in the book though it was not a Hollywood happy ending by any stretch.

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Taylor Markham is a troubled seventeen-year-old girl who is the leader of the boarders at the Jellicoe School, a residential school in the Australian countryside. She has lived at the school since she was eleven, when her mother abandoned her there. Taylor is fiercely independent and guarded, and she has a difficult relationship with the school’s headmaster and home tutor, Hannah.

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. I really loved the setting. I have never read a book set in Australia before and it was super interesting to read about. This was set around Christmas time which is the summer holidays in Australia. I could totally relate to that as I too live in the southern hemisphere. Silently I vow to keep Raffy around for the rest of my life." I was quite emotionally affected (I'd say 'manipulated' if not for the negative connotation of that word) by the nostalgic atmosphere Marchetta creates here. The nostalgia for the beauty of childhood and adolescence, for the friendships of the kind that you can only have before you reach adulthood, for the safety of childhood (no matter how messed up it can be), for the safe haven of Jellicoe School for the lost and messed up children. Sometimes the emotional intensity slips into a blatant melodrama. I mean, there was actually a remark on how intense Taylor and Jonah's relationship was, which made me feel like I'm reading a Twilight-type love story.By the time I began to piece some things together, I had already missed so many of the "connections" and details that it was kind of pointless. When the big reveals came toward the end, they were kind of meaningless to me. I never really connected with the characters or the storyline. I had simply missed too much to play catch-up at that point. I wasn't there to get on the three forty-seven to Yass. I was there to throw myself in front of it." Jonah, to Taylor. And Jonah Griggs, you stole my heart. Though I do think Melina Marchetta could quite easily persuade me to fall in love with a goldfish. The Iron Duke was the work of the architect Arthur W Ecclestone, who designed a number of pubs both before and after the Second World War.