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Book Summary and Reviews of Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta

Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta

Jellicoe Road

by Melina Marchetta

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  • Published:
  • Sep 2008, 432 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Jellicoe Road is a dazzling tale that is part love story, part family drama, and part coming-of-age novel.

Abandoned by her mother on Jellicoe Road when she was eleven, Taylor Markham, now seventeen, is finally being confronted with her past. But as the reluctant leader of her boarding school dorm, there isn't a lot of time for introspection. And while Hannah, the closest adult Taylor has to family, has disappeared, Jonah Griggs is back in town, moody stares and all.

In this absorbing story by Melina Marchetta, nothing is as it seems and every clue leads to more questions as Taylor tries to work out the connection between her mother dumping her, Hannah finding her then and her sudden departure now, a mysterious stranger who once whispered something in her ear, a boy in her dreams, five kids who lived on Jellicoe Road eighteen years ago, and the maddening and magnetic Jonah Griggs, who knows her better than she thinks he does. If Taylor can put together the pieces of her past, she might just be able to change her future.

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Book Awards

  • award image Michael Printz Award, 2009

Reviews

Media Reviews

"This reads like an adult novel in its complexity, asking much of the reader, who will be greatly rewarded and satisfied with the resolution that finally comes in Taylor's life." - KLIATT.

"Starred Review. Readers may feel dizzied and disoriented, but as they puzzle out exactly how Hannah's narrative connects with Taylor's current reality, they will find themselves ensnared in the story's fascinating, intricate structure. A beautifully rendered mystery." - Kirkus Reviews.

This information about Jellicoe Road was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Melina Marchetta Author Biography

Photo: Marc Burlace

Melina Marchetta is one of Australia's most successful writers of young-adult fiction and is a best-selling and critically acclaimed author in more than twenty countries and in eighteen languages. In 2009 Marchetta won the prestigious Michael L. Printz Award from the American Library Association for On the Jellicoe Road, and Melina's screenplay for this book is currently set to be made into a major film with an international cast to be directed by Looking for Alibrandi director Kate Woods. Melina is also developing a television series with writer/director Cathy Randall (Hey Hey It's Esther Blueburger) and is a writer for ABC-TV's Dance Academy. Finnikin of the Rock, Book One of the Lumatere Chronicles, was first published in Australia in 2008, followed in 2010 by the companion novel to her...

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