Not to be Missed...

On the Jellicoe Road by Melina Marchetta


My rating: 5 of 5 stars:

Goodreads blurb:

My father took one hundred and thirty two minutes to die.

‘I counted.

‘It happened on the Jellicoe Road. The prettiest road I’d ever seen, where trees made breezy canopies like a tunnel to Shangri-La. We were going to the ocean, hundreds of kilometres away, because I wanted to see the ocean and my father said that it was about time the four of us made that journey. I remember asking, “What’s the difference between a trip and a journey?” and my father said, “Narnie, my love, when we get there, you’ll understand,” and that was the last thing he ever said.

‘We heard her almost straight away. In the other car, wedged into ours so deep that you couldn’t tell where one began and the other ended. She told us her name was Tate and then she squeezed through the glass and the steel and climbed over her own dead – just to be with Webb and me; to give us her hand so we could clutch it with all our might. And then a kid called Fitz came riding by on a stolen bike and saved our lives.

‘Someone asked us later, “Didn’t you wonder why no one came across you sooner?”

‘Did I wonder?

‘When you see your parents zipped up in black body bags on the Jellicoe Road like they’re some kind of garbage, don’t you know?

‘Wonder dies.’



My take:
Not to be missed…whatever you do, keep reading. After a slow confusing start (a perfect mirror for the mind of our heroine, Taylor), this book takes you on an amazing journey.

Through friendship and death…“Is a person worth more because they have someone to grieve for them?”

Abandonment and loss…”One day when I was eleven, my mother drove me out here and while I was in the toilets at the 7-Eleven on the Jellicoe Road, she drove off and left me there. It becomes one of those defining moments in your life, when your mother does that.”

Through war and gut wrenching fear…suicide and drug addiction, the reader is drawn down a path by a story that grabs hold and doesn’t let go until all is known and the way is clear.

Twisty and beautiful…the best kind of book.




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The Late Great Jacob 'Big Dumb'

I hadn’t intended to post this week…my heart just wasn’t in it. Even when I saw the prompt it didn’t hit me for a moment how appropriate it was…I don’t know how they did it but many thanks to Laini and Megg for posting it. I have been working on this tribute for a few days never getting very far because it was just too painful…

I wanted a dog. I had just taken the entrance examination for medical school and while awaiting the admission process, I’d decided to move to Eastern Oregon where my parents now lived and had a rental house. The house had a big, fenced back yard with plenty of room for a puppy to run and I rationalize that I needed a friend. I agonized over ads in the paper. What I really wanted was a mastiff—big, gentle, and playful. Unfortunately, my budget didn’t run to the nine-hundred dollars that a mastiff would cost so in the end I got Jacob. Half-German Sheppard, Half Rottweiler. His parents, both purebred, had somehow gotten together accidentally and at one-hundred dollars, he was within my budgetary means. Easily the friendliest and most energetic of all his littermates, he immediately caught my attention. Before long, I was in love.

When I left Portland for my parents place, he rode in the car beside me, gleefully sticking his nose out the window feeling the warm air across his muzzle. He was the happiest dog I had ever met—a goofy attitude toward life reflected always in his eyes. A conscientious ‘mama’, immediately upon our arrival, I found a veterinarian and he had a checkup and vaccinations. I listened carefully to the portly elderly doctor extol the dangers of ‘people’ food and promised never to feed it to my ‘baby’.

Jake was an easy-going dog. He happily adopted the two stray kittens I took in a few weeks later, grooming them as if they were his own puppies. We went to dog training school and while he may not have been the smartest dog in his class, he was the most enthusiastic. Our lives settled into a lovely routine. In February of the following year, I met and started dating a handsome young man who also had a dog and together we had fabulous adventures. In the spring I started getting letters back from medical schools and found that my college guidance councilor was an idiot as all of the schools to which I applied except three, only accepted students from Montana, Idaho, Washington or Alaska. However, by this time I was seriously infatuated with the young man and considering changing my plans to go to medical school (there is a very high rate of divorce in med school).

In October, Jake and I moved back to Portland and bought a house with a nice yard in the suburbs. The nice young man and his dog soon followed and before long, we were a family. Jake was no longer a puppy now. He had grown tall and taken the body of his German Sheppard mother, with the coloring of his Rottweiler father. It was a lovely combination. I had kept my promise to the doctor and as an adult, Jake wouldn’t eat table scraps. You could give him the choicest piece of steak and he would daintily take it in his mouth, walk a few feet and drop it on the floor. Our friends and family remarked that he was the strangest dog.

Despite the fact that he had grown and was no longer a puppy, Jake couldn’t settle down. He was still a puppy at heart. He never walked sedately; he bounded and bounced—a goofy grin on his face. Kevin, the nice young man, jokingly called him ‘big dumb’ because he was such a silly idiot at times.

A few years later, a beautiful baby girl joined our family. Jake adopted her and became her greatest protector while at the same time, gracefully and a little sadly taking a back seat to the baby. He never lost his puppy like demeanor throughout his 13 years with me. He was ever loving and loyal—the bestest of friends.

We had known for months that he wouldn’t last the winter…he was an old man—91 in human years and his hips had bothered him greatly this past year. He could no longer go for walks or climb the stairs into the house. The past two weeks brought a progressive worsening as winter started to set in. He was incontinent and embarrassed about it, unable to get outside through the doggy door. Worst of all, he finally lost his bounce.

He died on Monday and I miss him horribly! I miss him coming to greet me no matter what time I got home. I miss his goofy grin and the way his tail would wag like crazy at anything you said as if he knew exactly what you were saying. I miss his bounce. There is a hole in my heart that I know will heal in time but for now, I’m just sad and I miss my dog.