Friday, June 4, 2010

Jellicoe Road

I know I'm not the first person to sing the praises of JELLICOE ROAD by Melina Marchetta, but I can't help myself.

If you haven't picked up this book, do yourself a favor and read it without hesitation.  It's the kind of book that makes me want to be a better writer.  It's the kind of book that makes you laugh and breaks your heart and keeps you up all night after you've finished, because you can't get it out of your head.

It's a quiet book.  For the first hundred pages, I wasn't exactly sure what was happening.  There are two stories told side by side.  One story is in the past.  It's the story of five friends brought together by death on the Jellicoe Road.  The other story is the present, told from the perspective of Taylor Markham, a moody, courageous girl leading the Jellicoe School against the Townies and the Cadets in their annual Territory Wars.

But no one paragraph can describe it.  I fell in love with certain sentences, phrases, the simply beauty of Machetta's prose, but you can't full appreciate the book until after.  When you can stand back and see the whole of things.

It's sentimental without being sappy.  It's dramatic without being melodramatic.  It's funny, it's sincere.  It's a lot of things I'll never be able to describe.

I guess what I'm saying here is that you need to go read this book.  It's one of THOSE books.  It's a quiet, important book.  It's the kind of book that exemplifies why YA is so important.

If you've already read it, share your thoughts.  If you haven't, what are some books that YOU think are important that everyone read?

1 comment:

  1. Does this have anything to do with Jellicle songs for Jellicle cats? ;)

    ReplyDelete

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