Jasper Jones  
Craig Silvey

Late on a hot summer night in the tail end of 1965, Charlie Bucktin, a precocious and bookish boy of thirteen, is startled by an urgent knock on the window of his sleepout. His visitor is Jasper Jones, an outcast in the regional mining town of Corrigan.

Rebellious, mixed-race and solitary, Jasper is a distant figure of danger and intrigue for Charlie. So when Jasper begs for his help, Charlie eagerly steals into the night by his side, terribly afraid but desperate to impress. Jasper takes him through town and to his secret glade in the bush, and it’s here that Charlie bears witness to Jasper’s horrible discovery.

With this secret like a brick in his belly, Charlie is pushed and pulled by a town closing in on itself and in vainly attempting to restore the parts that have been shaken loose, Charlie learns to discern the truth from the myth, and why white lies creep like a curse.

Reviews

If we see a more entertaining, more heartfelt piece of Australian literature in the next 12 months it will be a rare year indeed…Jasper Jones is an Australian To Kill a Mockingbird.
– The Monthly

Reading this novel, you suspect every character of murder; Agatha Christie couldn't weave it tighter… It's a story in which the romantic myths we conceived in childhood collide with ugly headlines in contemporary newspapers.
– Weekend Australian

First love has never tasted so bittersweet. 5 stars.
– Who Weekly

[T]he new novel from this great young Aussie author is like a local version of Huckleberry Finn – full of adventure, mystery and hard-won truths. 
– j mag

There are parts where you'll laugh out loud, others where you'll reach for tissues. This is a very special book, and deserves to be read widely. Five stars: outstanding.
– Good Reading

This novel is a total knockout. Watch for it to start appearing in various awards longlists as the year goes on…
– Bookman Beattie blog

There’s tension, injustice, young love, hypocrisy, whiffs of The Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird, and, above all, the certainty that Silvey has planted himself in the landscape as one of our finest storytellers.
– Australian Women’s Weekly

Published

Australia/NZ 2009 (Allen & Unwin), US (Knopf Books), UK (Windmill/Random House), Spain (Seix Barral/Grupo Planeta), Italy (Neri Pozza/Giano Editore), France (Calmann-Lévy/Hachette), China (ThinKingdom), Korea (Tin Drum Publishing), Taiwan (Solo Press/The Eurasian Publishing Group), Film Rights sold to Australian Director Rebecca O’Brien, more shortly…

Craig Silvey

CRAIG SILVEY grew up on an orchard in Dwellingup Western Australia. He now lives in Fremantle, where at the age of 19, he wrote his blindingly successful first novel, Rhubarb, published by Fremantle Press in 2004. Outside of literature, Silvey is the singer/songwriter for the band The Nancy Sikes!