Jasper Jones in Aussie Readers

Oct 24, 2015 PattyMacDotComma rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: australian-author, chcc-library, favourites-children-kids-ya, mystery-crime-thriller, indigenous-first-nations, ya-and-new-readers

5★
At the end of this book, the author thanked, among others, librarians and booksellers who never get the credit they deserve for supporting books. I would like to thank the librarians of the Goodreads Aussie Readers group for their inventive reading challenges which send readers to book lists and genres we might never have discovered. That was how I found Jasper Jones. Thank you.!

I saw it was an award-winner, but somehow I didn’t expect it to appeal to me. I was wrong. It really is like hearing ...more

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Apr 12, 2017 Kerry rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This is an outstanding read. Beautifully written with a strong storyline and a selection of great characters. Calling it Australia's "To Kill a Mockingbird" is a little over the top, but it is great book nonetheless! Definitely worth a read! ...more

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May 01, 2011 Cathy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: australian, historical-fiction

I absolutely agree with the tagging of this book as 'an Australian to Kill a Mockingbird'. It deals with many of the same themes, yet is so authentically Australian. I loved the characters, the heartbreaking tenderness that existed in the awkwardness of the teenagers. It evoked really well the era it was set in and I felt I could smell the town in that summer. I found it funny, moving and insightful with great characters. ...more

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Aug 30, 2010 Magdalena added it · review of another edition

The first thing that struck me while reading Jasper Jones was the authenticity of the dialogue. Charlie and his friend Jeffery speak in a way that is so redolent of my own thirteen year old son’s conversations with his friends that it was almost shocking. I don’t think I’ve seen that insulting macho warmth captured so well before in literature. My son actually read this book before me, and when I said this to him, he responded in agreement. Charlie Bucktin is a young boy at that wonderful and te The first thing that struck me while reading Jasper Jones was the authenticity of the dialogue. Charlie and his friend Jeffery speak in a way that is so redolent of my own thirteen year old son’s conversations with his friends that it was almost shocking. I don’t think I’ve seen that insulting macho warmth captured so well before in literature. My son actually read this book before me, and when I said this to him, he responded in agreement. Charlie Bucktin is a young boy at that wonderful and terrible age where youth and maturity are both fighting equally for supremacy. For some children that loss of childhood may come later, but the roots tend to be right there, at the testosterone rich edge of the teen years when you are simultaneously understanding, and struggling with everything: emotions, authority, expectations, relationships. Charlie is a character that is both extraordinary and ordinary – a boy that is utterly recognisable as he tries to come to terms with the terrible situation he finds himself in.

Jasper Jones is the local tough boy – “a Thief, a Liar, a Thug, a Truant’. He’s the town’s scapegoat – a half caste who sleeps rough and is blamed whenever something goes missing. One summer evening, Jasper knocks on Charlie’s window, urging him out to help him deal with a horrible crime that Jasper fears he will be held responsible for. For a bookworm like Charlie, an association with Jasper is both terrifying and titillating. It’s the start of a fairly straightforward plotline that involves solving the mystery that tortures both Charlie and Jasper, but it’s also the start of Charlie’s own coming of age – a more complicated story about love, prejudice, and the making of a meaningful life that has an air of nostalgia bedded into it – as if the narrator were recounting his story from an older reflective distance. Although it takes the structure of a mystery-thriller, with its intense opening, Jasper Jones is a rich character driven novel set late in 1965, during the Vietnam War. Throughout the book, humour and pathos mingle expertly, reminding us that joy and pain are often two sides of a single coin. There are many wonderful examples of this, from Jeffrey’s first cricket game where he plays through racist taunts, to a scene at Church where in the midst of Jeffrey’s (the ‘Fartful Podger’) stolen ginger snaps, his mother is attacked for being Vietnamese. It is during the first cricket game where we meet a real bully – the parallel character to Jasper – Warwick Trent:

And probably due to the fact that most of his bodily resources are diverted directly to his pituitary gland, he’s also an affront to academia. Seldom is this boasted about, but he also holds the record for the most grades repeated (two). It’s a little fact that renders me smug, but also sore, because his stupidity has placed him in my grade.

See, in class, if I use a word that he believes is too clever, or isn’t one of the half-dozen monosyllabic commands that he readily understands, he and his henchmen will seek me out, either at lunch or after school, and will repeat the offending word like a mantra, each time punching me on either shoulder. (75)

In the middle of crisis, as Charlie is coming to recognise a variety of falsehoods in his own life and home coupled with a growing tension between his parents, he has his first experience of love. This is coupled with guilt, fear, and displacement, as the simple truths of his hometown become unravelled. There are certainly moments of warmth and a bit of “Sassytime,” as Jeffrey calls it, and the dialogue between the two friends continues through the book to be lighthearted and humorous, even when everything else is black, but Jasper Jones is no light read. There are serious issues addressed in this book: powerful and bleak. The damage in many cases can’t be undone, and the ending, while tying things up neatly, doesn’t allow for a return to innocence.

The small Western Australia town of Corrigan is almost a character, with its stifling prejudices that spreads, like stinkweed, through the minor characters, from Jasper’s father, to the young thugs who destroy Jeffrey’s father’s beautiful garden. There are secrets to be uncovered everywhere – in both child and adult – past and present, and villains lurk in unexpected places. Jasper Jones remains a nobody - the silent, disappearing hero in Charlie’s life, but he is also heroic - the catalyst to change and growth. Although there are dark edges to Jasper Jones, this is a wonderful, beautifully written, positive story of personal transformation which lingers with the reader.

Article first published as Book Review: Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey on Blogcritics. ...more

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Nov 03, 2013 Nettie rated it really liked it

Full of cruelty and sadness, and yet the tenderness of friendships shines through. Silvey portrays country town life in Australia so well - the searing heat, tracking through the bush, biting insects and scratchy plants. The story centres on Jasper and yet we get to know other characters far better than we ever will Jasper. Enjoyment isn't the right word to describe my reaction to this book, but I am very glad that I have read it. ...more

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