Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
‘On the Jellicoe Road’ is the first book I’ve read/listened to by this author. After all of the glowing reviews for this one, I was prepared to be blown away. Unfortunately, it just didn’t work out that way for me. It ended up being an “okay” story for me.
My first problem has less to do with the actual story, and more to do with the format that I chose. I listened to the Audible edition and that was a big mistake. The problem didn’t stem from the quality of narration, so much as the complexity of the story. There were simply too many moving parts for me to try and keep track of while listening to an audiobook. It is incredibly hard to pull off a book like this in audiobook format and it didn’t work for me.
I spent hours trying to figure out who the characters were and what the hell was going on. The transitions between characters and time frames was not always obvious, making matters even worse. I must have been hours into the story before I figured out that there were actually two stories playing out — one in the present and one in the past. Needless to say, I lost a lot of time being utterly confused and unaware of what was going on.
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.
The story centers on Taylor Markham, a girl that was abandoned on the Jellicoe Road by her mother at the age of 11. She lives at a boarding school (orphanage???). When the lady that has taken care of her disappears, she is certain that something is amiss. Taylor sets out to find Hannah, or discover what really happened to her.
When she runs across a book/journal written by Hannah, she begins to unveil some long-standing secrets. Along with some friends from her school, she has several creepy encounters and a variety of adventures. There is some sort of rivalry described between the two groups of kids…but I was pretty confused so I can’t say I ever really grasped what that was about for sure.
Overall, this ended up being a middle of the road story for me. I do suspect that I’m not doing this story justice though. I was just too lost for most of the book to take much away from the experience this time around.
I do plan to re-read this in the future, because I have some lingering questions. I’m sure they were answered along the way and I just didn’t catch it. I definitely won’t be listening to the audiobook on my second attempt. This story will require my full attention.
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