Featured Title: Jasper Jones

by Craig Silvey

Read by Humphrey Bower

Late on a hot summer night at 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 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 steals into the night by his side, terrified but desperate to impress.

Jasper takes him through town to his secret glade in the bush, and it's here that Charlie bears witness to Jasper's horrible discovery. Carrying the secret like a brick in his belly, Charlie is harried by a suspicious town tightening in fear. In the simmering summer where everything changes, he locks horns with his tempestuous mother, falls nervously in love, and battles to keep a lid on his zealous best friend, Jeffrey Lu. 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; why the truth of things is so hard to know, and even harder to hold in his heart.

Jasper Jones

Author Information:

Craig Silvey grew up on an orchard in Western Australia. He currently lives in Fremantle, where at the age of 19, he wrote his best-selling novel, Rhubarb. In 2005, best-selling Rhubarb, was chosen as the 'One Book' for the Perth International Writers' Festival, and was included in the national Books Alive campaign. Silvey also received a Sydney Morning Herald Best Young Novelist Award. Jasper Jones is his second novel.