“Jasper Jones” by Craig Silvey

Joining fellow Aussies Markus Zusak, Margo Lanagan and Melina Marchetta, Craig Silvey delivers this highly literary, rich, disturbing tale. Charlie Bucktin is a 13 year-old boy living in a mining town far south of Perth. The year is 1965 and tensions are high during a hot summer in a place where drinking and corporal punishment are frequent in families. Despite all of this, Charlie’s existence is fairly average – hanging out with his friend Jeffrey, making gross jokes, using foul language and cheering Jeffrey on as he tries to make the cut on the local Cricket team. Charlie’s innocence is shattered by a knock at his bedroom window one night. The local bad boy, Jasper Jones, has a horrific secret and needs Charlie’s help. Charlie, being a generally kind and well-meaning kid, travels into the bush with Jasper, only to have his understanding of the world shattered. Unlike most novels, this one opens with the critical event and much of the rest of the book is falling action. The focus of the tale is not really on what happens that one night, but Charlie’s attempt to make sense of the world around him when the veil of propriety falls away. Charlie is a reader and a writer and a lover of words. Much of the book is his internal monologue, seeking to put meaning to meaningless violence, hoping that there is a reason for events rather than accept that there is evil in the world. If this had been an American tale, I would say that Charlie is too mature for his years – he reflects on joy as a palpable yet indefinable element of life, and waxes on for over a page as to what kind of person says the word “sorry” and the weight that the word contains. But this isn’t an American novel. It is quintessentially Australian. While events of the time (the Vietnam War, the rise of Muhammad Ali, the talk of communists and space flights) were achingly familiar to me, much of the book describes a world so alien it feels like a different planet. Charlie drinks coffee throughout the day – flavored with sweetened condensed milk, courtesy of his parents. He hates the heat of summer but enjoys being out of school. Of course, summer includes Christmas and New Years! His relationship with Jeffrey is filled with enough colloquialisms and slang to make your head spin. I was able to parse out most of it based on context but the Cricket matches, described in detail, are still a huge mystery to me. The landscape includes native trees and kangaroo and Charlie’s growing friendship with Jasper may seem a little “bromance-like” to U.S. readers but I suspect it is more reflective of the difference in cultures. The concepts in the book are ones you can reflect on a good deal while reading. The dense nature of the writing explains my slow pacing in getting through it, although I was driven to turn the page and see if Charlie would find any resolution. I was only able to complete one or two of the nine chapters a day as I needed time to digest and review each before moving on. Powerful, real and deeply poignant, this one, like “Code Name Verity” will haunt me a while. It is creepy, but on a far deeper level than you might expect. Enjoy a layered story that goes so many places you don’t expect.