- Title: Jasper Jones
- Written by: Craig Silvey
- Published On: March 31st 2009
- Publisher of the book: Allen & Unwin
- Total No. of Pages: 397
- Genres: Fiction, Australian
- RRP: $23.99
- Rating: 4 stars
Today I want to share with you my thoughts on one of the most acclaimed books of the year: Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey. If you are a lover of mystery novels, it is likely that you have heard about this book. It is a coming-of-age story that takes place in a small town in Western Australia in the 1960s, where two teenage boys find out a terrible secret.First, let us check out what this book is all about:
What is this book about?
Here is the description or summary of the book:
He has, strangely. On a hot summer night a little past midnight on the very end of 1965, Charlie Bucktin, an bookish and intelligent boy of thirteen years old is awoken by a knock on his sleep-out window.
Solitary and hybrid, Jasper is a vague and mysterious symbol of threat for Charlie. When Jasper, in his turn, asks for his help, Charlie steals into the darkness along with him, terrified as he is but eager to make an impression. Jasper leads him through town and into his bush secret glade where he sees what is at once Charlie’s most terrifying and liberating discovery.
With his secret, Charlie is forced between two extremes as the town closes in on itself in suspicion and fear with him locked into horns with his tempestuous mother, love at first nervous sight and fighting to hold the lid on his best friend who is zealous, Jeffrey Lu.
Also, while unsuccessfully trying to reattach the parts that are loosened, Charlie learns to distinguish between the truth and myth as well as how white lies seep like a curse. In this summer that is cooking and all is changing Charlie knows why the truth of things is so difficult to know, and even more impossible to keep in his heart.
My Personal Review on this book
It has been more than just a few months since I read Jasper Jones for the book club. Really, I am rather neutral about my general view of Jasper Jones. I assumed that I waited for this book far too long, my expectations were so high and my desire to read the same novel only grew higher and higher. I now can say that I am in the right mindset to write this review and give my opinion on Jasper Jones, who clearly is a character rather than just wrote about it.
This is indeed a commendable effort by Silvey in an attempt to combine themes in order to provide the reader with something concrete enough in terms of giving him or her a broad overview of what life was like particularly regarding the social and moral values that predominated Australia during the 1960s. In view of the fact that at this time, Australia was deep into its involvement in the Vietnam War, it can be said that the situation was not easy for the individual’s Lu Family.
However, the war left emigrant Vietnamese families to be held responsible and be made fun of in all ways. On reading the episodes in which Jeffrey and all of the Lu family was being humiliated, I could not progress beyond it. Analogically, in his work Sivery describes the racist treatment of natives which becomes visible from Jasper Jones.
Jasper was the first criminal in the small town of Corrigan, and since then there were many crimes there, but Jasper is used as a scapegoat for the same crime. Silvey uses ease in showcasing the numerous challenges his characters pass through.
These reasons mostly came from the failure to identify with any of the characters after diving into it early on or being alienated by Silvey’s style, but more importantly, the way it does is connected to Charlie Bucktin as an average voice.
