![image.png](https://files.peakd.com/file/peakd-hive/lordtimoty/23wX3Bstzfk2QEU2KGVZ2XKeQnorp4pfNwzK5eJvwyRivHs6LBa4TmixWVhYYVkEjdPEB.png)

[Cover from publsher's webstie, Allen and Unwin](https://s3-ap-southeast-2.amazonaws.com/assets.allenandunwin.com/images/original/9781742372624.jpg)

Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey
Published 2009

Yesterday I was pleased to turn the final pages in ‘Jasper Jones’. This read is widely considered a bit of an Australian classic, and I can’t believe it’s taken me this long to get to it. It is a period novel set in the late 1960s – and it is important, because it offers an insight into how we treat people and understand who they are behind the stories and the facades. 

Plot Overview – Character Overview (with all sorts of spoilers):

My feeling is that this novel is best understood as a bit of a study of people, and so I want to proceed with this review by thinking about characters (particularly as they’re constructs to explore ideas!) rather than plot. Edit: I’ve really criss-crossed through the characters, largely because no character can operate in isolation. 

Except – I’ll start with the complication:
In the middle of the night, Jasper Jones knocks on Charles’ window and invites him into the middle of the bush, where they find the dead body of Laura Wishart. Jasper, as a young Indigenous man, in a time when he would likely be blamed for all manner of things due to the colour of his skin, takes the body of Laura which was hanging from his tree and sinks it into the dam. This murder cover up begins an unlikely friendship or dependency between the pair. 

Character One: Jeffery Lu

Jeffery is Charles’ best friend, and they are also neighbours. Jeffery and his family has been able to migrate out from Vietnam, and as the war in Vietnam is still occurring, and taking conscripts from this small country town, a lot of venom and racism is thrown towards Jeffery’s family. In one scene, his father’s garden is ripped up and he is assaulted; in another, his mother is at a town event and has hot coffee thrown over her. And, the town just seems to accept that this is how things were – but the racism towards this Vietnamese family only goes to mirror the racist suspicions towards Jasper.

That said, Jeffery is one of the funniest characters I’ve ever encountered in literature – he is quick witted, and his phrases are hilarious. The banter between he and Charles gives this book life and captures the back and forth of their quipping relationship. And, despite this backdrop, Jeffery also features as the town hero for a time – as he was called in to play on the cricket team. He wasn’t allowed to bowl, and was last in the batting line-up, but in a spectacular display, took the team from an unwinnable position to the victors. It went with the commentary that for the sake of a winning sports team, people could look past your skin. 

Character Two: Charlie Bucktin

This is the narrator of the story, a thirteen year old boy, who is picked on at school for being smart and doesn’t quite fit in anywhere. He seems to have an incredibly simple life, based on appearances, but through the novel these are all stripped back. There is a bit of humour in the book as the discipline of the 1960s is brought to full use, and of course, it is Summer, so he’s outside most of the time pre-video games. 

Through Charlie, we see his father – an academic who had a dream of one day writing a book. His father is particularly disengaged with the world, and seems to find his solace in his writing and teaching. Yet – his values are also interesting, as he tries to guide Charlie in his humanist approach. 

Then of course there is Charlie’s mother, who we are often told had a privileged background, but – as it was the 1950s, and as she was pregnant with Charlie – a shotgun wedding ensued and they moved to the small country town of Corrigan to escape judgement and then never left. We get the sense that despite her perfect motherly appearance, that she is unhappy – and Charlie catches her in the back of her car with another man – and that’s the catalyst for her to just up and leave and try to return to her old existence.

Character Three: Jasper Jones

While he is the titular character, it’s funny that the plot revolves around him, but he’s not in the novel a lot. You see, he’s the ‘bad boy’ of the town, and his reputation means he gets blamed by all his peers for all sorts of things. It’s not really that he’s that much of a deviant, but it is that he is Indigenous, and being dark skinned makes him the most likely suspect for misdemeanour at this time. 

The thing about Jasper is that he loved Laura Wishart and was wanting to take her away to the city. This would allow Laura to escape abuse that was occurring at home at the hands of her father, which is implied to be physical. To that end, Jasper is painted as a bit of a saviour. His plan, having displaced Laura’s body to the water was to find her murderer – and that is largely the sequence of steps which develop around him. By the end of the novel, he encounters Laura’s sister Eliza, who tells Jasper that the physical marks on Laura’s body (which led him to believe she was murdered) were caused by her father on the night she came to the bush to hang herself. She had come to find Jasper and to leave town with him, having not seen him for two weeks. Not finding him at his special spot, she felt completely abandoned. It layers another sense of guilt into the novel, and by the novel’s final pages, the Wishart house is burning down. We don’t know who did it, or the circumstance leading to the flames taking over, but it’s certainly hinted that Jasper may be to blame – but, he’s never seen again, having left town. Laura’s father had to be pulled from the fire, and the town mayor finds himself receiving medical help on the front lawn. Knowing this, the other hint may be that he lit the fire himself as a physical manifestation of his own all encompassing guilt.

Character Four Eliza Wishart: (Although, how many have I mentioned? More than four!)

Eliza is an interesting character, because she is Charlie’s love interest. And, during the novel we see their awkward exchanges where they seem incapable of talking to each other, and then the progression of the relationship. Of course, Jeffery Lu likes to refer to this progression as ‘Sassy time’. The complication in all of this is, that Charlie was part of the duo who sank Laura Wishart’s body in the dam, and this was the murder cover up. Eliza on the other hand blamed herself for the murder, as she seen her sister in the bush on the night of her death, and feels had she called out – she would have been able to stop her from hanging herself. One of Eliza’s quirks is that she seems to put on a refined accent, but she is the opposite. I liked this part of her character development.

Character Five Mad Jack Lionel:

This is probably my favourite character in the novel. Mad Jack Lionel, with a peach tree by his porch. The myths around Jack is that he is a murderer, and that anyone would risk their life to enter his property, yet, kids in the town were anointed heroes if they were to take a peach from his tree and live to tell the tale! Of course, this narrative makes Jack the likely suspect in the murder of Laura Wishart – as he is positioned as the character who continually yells out to Jasper whenever he passes their property. 

Through the novel, Charlie and Jasper go to Jack’s house to accuse him. They had seen an old vehicle on his property with the word ‘Sorry’ scrawled into the metal. This mirrored the word ‘Sorry’ which they found at the base of the tree where Laura’s life ended. In going to accuse him, Jasper’s understanding of the world is flipped on its head – as Jack opens the door and warmly invites Jasper in. Jack goes on to reveal that he was Jasper’s grandfather – and gives insight into the ‘murderer’ label, as he was driving Jasper’s mother to hospital, as her appendix was about to burst, and he crashed the car killing her. At that time, Jasper’s father, already distant from Jack, never spoke to him or about him again. It was the saddest recollection – as Jack was white, and Jasper’s mother was Indigenous – and initially, he didn’t care for her and opposed the pair’s union and child (Jasper). Yet, over time, her warmth to him leads to a relationship which he treasures. 

By the novel’s end, Charlie has made a wager knowing that Mad Jack Lionel is a nice old man, to take five peaches from the tree. He swaps Jack a home cooked meal if Jack would participate in his character – and so as Charlie is leaving, to the gasps of all the onlookers from school, Jack bursts from his porch holding a rifle and yelling – Charlie turns, runs at Jack, throws his rifle away and pushes Jack to the ground, and the novel concludes with Charlie having his own narrative which will leave on about him cemented.

It just goes to show, nothing is as it seems. And that is exactly what this book is about.

How many stars?
At least a 9.5 out of 10! I’m disappointed that it’s taken me this long to read it, but I partly know why – in 2017 it was released as a major film release with a lot of hype, and I tend not to go for books that have been made into films. I don’t know why, I certainly had no interest in the film. 

This book has such a timeless quality, particularly given it’s setting in the 1960s. I can see this one being read and studied for the next fifty years! Many of you know I’m an English teacher, and at my school, this novel is often taught to Year 10 students (16 year olds). I’m not sure I would teach it, given the heavy themes in the book, but I’d like to think that a young person would pick this up and perhaps see the world in a different way. And ain’t that the magic of literature?