I don't know why, but he has. Maybe he's in trouble. Maybe he doesn't have anywhere else to go.
Either way, he's just frightened the living shit out of me.'
These are the opening words of young Charlie - we are in a small town in the west of Australia, Jasper the bad boy of town, mix-race. befriends our narrator and leads him into his reluctant adolescence.
With pangs of Mark Twain, Harper Lee and many others, we shadow the boys during the southern hemisphere summer of 1965. The Wordsmithery is non-stop, supplied by the young Jeffery Lu a Vietnamese emigrant, cricket ace and neighbour and of course Charlie:
'...I wonder if we're here to steal a peach each...Jeffrey says I'm afflicted with Lovetummy, a known side effect stemming from excessive Sassytime.'
Reading Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey is like drinking a cold beer after a hot days work.
Drunkenness, village ignorance, a dead girl, racism, police brutality, are all held together with Ozzy wit and wisdom. The questions is weather you opt for a tarantula hat or willies for fingers!
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