Jasper Jones cover (Courtesy Allen & Unwin)
What is is about coming-of-age novels? Why do we like to read them long after we’ve (hopefully) come of age ourselves? Is it because we like to compare our own experience with that of others? Whatever the reason, it is clear that we do like to read them because they sure keep being written and published. In my few months of blogging I have already written about two, and have now read another, Craig Silvey’s Jasper Jones.
Like many, though not all, such novels, Jasper Jones has a first person narrator. It is set in a small country town in Western Australia in the late 1960s, and the protagonist, Charlie, is the nearly 14-year-old son of a high school literature teacher. He is a reader and therefore, almost by definition in the world of teenage boys, not “cool”. The book opens with the town’s bad-boy, Jasper Jones, knocking on his window in the middle of the night and, to Charlie’s surprise and delight, asking him for his help. The plot revolves around the shocking help that Jasper wants, how Charlie responds and the impact on him, his friends and family.
It is a pretty dark and gritty story, and Silvey, mostly, controls it well, though there are times when he pushes the melodrama button a little too heavily. Silvey teases us at the beginning with the notion that the book will be a re-setting of Harper Lee’s To kill a mockingbird. There’s a death, an indigenous person likely to be blamed for it, a much maligned apparently “mad” person, an apparently thoughtful and wise father AND Charlie’s own regular reference to the book and to how Atticus Finch might think in particular situations. However, fortunately I think, Silvey is a little more sophisticated a writer than that and Harper Lee’s book functions more as a frame for the story and the ideas being explored than as a direct model for the plot.
One of the things I like in the novel is the friendship between Charlie and his Vietnamese refugee school-mate, Jeffrey Lu. I’m not a teenage boy but I have known some in my time! The dialogue between the two boys rings pretty true – their puns, their ribbing of each other, their jokey arguments. True too is their uneven burgeoning interest in the opposite sex – Charlie is attracted to classmate Eliza Wishart and to enjoying some “sassytime” with her, while Jeffrey’s focus is on making the town cricket team.
The novel is neatly plotted – and while some of it is predictable it is not all so. The fact that Charlie fears insects seems to be resolved when we discover that his love-interest Eliza has a similar fear – but it reappears again, cleverly, in the denouement. The story is well-paced, and it deals with a range of side issues, such as racism (against the Vietnamese refugee family, and the “half-caste” Jasper Jones), on top of the usual coming-of-age ones, such as loss of innocence (in several meanings of the word). Many of the characters could be seen as stereotyped – the “bastard” cricket coach who aligns himself with the “boorish” bully boys, and the cold-hearted status-seeking shire president, to name two – but most of them work despite this. Charlie’s mother though stretches the imagination a little too much: she has married down, she has been forced to live in a country town too small for her, and she has lost a child. This does seem a bit of overkill and the panning out of her part of the story feels a bit like one too many layers in the book.
One of the concepts that Charlie explores is that of “timing and chance”. He learns that despite your best laid plans, time and chance sometimes take over and there’s not much you can do about it. Another issue that runs through the book is that of reading, words and language. Early on Jasper Jones tells Charlie he trusts him because:
But I hope you might see things from my end. That’s what you do, right? When you’re reading. You’re seeing what it’s like for other people.
With this coming near the beginning of the book, it’s not surprising that Charlie’s ability to empathise, to see things from other points of view, is pushed to the limits as the story progresses. Charlie, whose ambition is to be a writer, also learns about the limits of words, about when they are useful and when they are not, and about finding the right ones to use when they are.
There are many thematic and stylistic things that can be talked about in this book, making it a good one for discussion but, in the end, it is a fairly traditional coming-of-age story in its style, tone and structure. That said, if you like such stories, as I do, there’s a good chance you’ll find this a compelling and entertaining even if not a particularly challenging read. And is there anything wrong with that?
Craig Silvey
Jasper Jones
Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2009
368pp.
ISBN: 9781741757743
Whispering Gums 
This one looks very interesting Sue. Have suggested it to my book group as one we might enjoy. Thanks for an enjoyable read here in your little piece of blogland.
Thanks Steph – yes, I think it is a good one for a group. There’s a lot that you can get your teeth into and argue over here I think AND it’s a pretty compelling read as well.
I wonder if it’s the nostalgia factor, bringing back memories of our own childhoods, that makes this genre so popular?
Lisa
I think that’s definitely part of it Lisa – and not simply nostalgia but an awareness that they are such formative years that we are intrinsically interested in them.
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I did enjoy reading Jasper Jones, but wondered why a 27 year old set his coming of age story (rather like The Year My Voice Broke, I thought) back in 1965 yet employed noughties dialogue for the teenage boys. Now I was a teenage boy in the early to mid 1970s and none of my friends talked like these kids. None of us were quite that hip. I think that in ’60s teenage Australia there were probably very few ‘queers’, but might have been some ‘poofs’, that balls probably had it over bollocks (very English that one seems to me), and, speaking of balls, overs in Australia then had six of them, not eight. I also wondered just how many Vietnamese kids were living in rural Australia at that time.
Jeffery Lu saving the day with a swashbuckling innings at the eleventh hour was also just a bit stereotyped, I thought. Now I might be a nitpicking historian reluctant to admit to the ultimate truth provided by fiction, but nonetheless these glitches for me devalued what was an otherwise well written novel with good characterisation and character development and a powerful story. Albeit, as you say, a pretty traditional coming of age story.
Thanks for popping by Ian. Must admit, not being a nit-picking historian, I didn’t think about those particular issues you raised! Did you think though that the style/substance of their talk/repartee (even if not the language) rang true? I didn’t think it was a “perfect” novel either, for slightly different reasons as I described – and don’t think it should win the Miles Franklin – but I did think it a good read. It is interesting that he set it in a period before his own adolescence isn’t it? Did he want to go pre-technology I wonder?
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I’ve enjoyed the honesty of the comments here and totally agree.
I liked the book but felt that it lacked balance. You’ve expressed it better here by “one too many layers”. I had said “Silvey jammed too many good stories into a small space and left the reader peckish” . The banter between Jeffrey and Charlie, although enjoyable (I just loved Jeffrey!) seemed to be a way of getting in some cheap laughs.
But my biggest concern was how I felt I’d heard it all before. Like the movie, Stand by Me, Jasper Jones is a coming of age tale where a prepubescent aspiring writer is forced to deal with grown up issues (and just quietly,the superhero debate is a blatant ripoff!) And like To Kill a Mockingbird, racism, 1960’s conservatism , small town prejudice and narrow mindedness are jammed up against the issues of family and social status. Boo Radley goes by the name of Jack Lionel in this version.
I like both of these older texts so it follows that I liked Jasper Jones. And thankfully Jasper Jones has it’s own ending – a satisfying one at that. It just felt like I’d heard it all somewhere before…
Well said Jen … and this all makes it hard to assess doesn’t it? So much good about it but just something that didn’t quite got there. I like your “leaving the reader peckish”. Good one! Thanks muchly for taking the time to comment.
The Banner between Charlie and Jeffrey is almost identical to the banter last year between my 28 year old daughter and her (now ex) boyfriend, though they missed the witty puns. I enjoyed the story, though agree, Charlie’s Mum suffers a bit too much.
The banter…
Haha, yes my response initially auto corrected to banner too.
I loved the banter, Neil. It reminded me of our son and one of his friends when they were teenagers. My problem with the book, though I loved it overall, was that he threw too many issues in there, and the mother was part of that I felt. Sounds like we agree.
Yes, we agree. Enjoy your travels!
Sure will, thanks!
I’m sorry but I can’t get past the anachronisms. As you state ‘Vietnamese Refugee’. The first of those arrived famously in 1976, 11 years later. It is a large problem for such a key character. Also the Superman vs Batman debate is very noughties as in 1965 the comic of Batman was in decline, only to resurface with the camp TV show in 1966. Muhammad Ali had only just changed his name and the only reference was from Howard Cossel. No Australian boy would have known this at that time and Clay’s ban had only been lifted the year before. How this novel won any prizes is beyond me.
Thanks Leigh. I know you are not the only one to be bothered by these. It’s not a perfect book, although my reasons aren’t really related to these issues, which don’t really bother me. Historical inaccuracy in fiction is not something I worry too much about, but it probably would have been better had he got these things right.