Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

Jellicoe Road is where Taylor Markham was abandoned by her mother years ago, and since then she’s been living at the Jellicoe School and with Hannah, who works at the school and who has taken a special interest in Taylor. Now Hannah has suddenly disappeared, leaving Taylor feeling abandoned all over again, and the timing couldn’t be worse: the military Cadets have returned for their annual local camping stint, making it time for the resumption of the long-running and secret territorial war between the Cadets, the Townies, and the School, with Taylor this year the leader of the School—and trying to forget her history with Jonah, the leader of the Cadets. Into this already intense and elaborate plot intertwine segments of another story about similar teenagers, a quintet of friends drawn from School, Cadets, and Townies and linked together by tragedy, and as the interpolated passages accumulate to make a clearer narrative, it becomes apparent that these segments of what was initially supposed to be Hannah’s unfinished novel is [End Page 124] actually her true life story, which hides the mystery of Taylor’s own past. The book uncompromisingly starts with the fragments unconnected, leaving readers teased by a mystery they can’t even begin to piece together even as they’re enticed by the taut intensity of the atmosphere and Australian author Marchetta’s impeccable, long-striding style. Though the elements are melodramatic, they serve to heighten the intensity of emotion rather than the drama itself, steeping the book in loss and longing. Yet the solution to these griefs is subtly constructed before Taylor’s eyes as the people around her demonstrate that she matters deeply to them, and it’s clear that her circle is, in its own way, recreating the bonds of the previous generation and offering a happy ending that their predecessors were largely unable to find. Even readers with boringly normal lives will recognize the strains of Taylor’s individuation (about Hannah, she says, “I hate her for not working out what I need from her”), and they’ll be relieved to see her and her collection of surprising yet staunch friends finding their way at last.