Jasper Jones

"Catcher in the Rye meets To Kill a Mockingbird in a novel that confronts racism, injustice, friendship and the tenderness of first love - as seen by bookish, guileless, 13-year-old Charlie Bucktin, led astray by the intriguing, dangerous eponymous outcast, Jasper Jones" (Easy Living)

"Terrific...this is an enthralling novel that invites comparison with Mark Twain and isn't found wanting. Silvey is able to switch the mood from the tragic to the hilarious in an instant" (Mail on Sunday)

"A finely crafted novel that deals with friendship, racism and social ostracism... Saluting To Kill a Mockingbird and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Silvey movingly explores the stifling secrets that lurk behind the most ordinary of facades" (Marie Claire)

"Jasper Jones is a well-paced, eminently readable bildungsroman... The exultation contained in the description of a cricket game featuring Charlie's irrepressible best friend is enough alone to earn this book sentimental-classic status." (The Monthly)

"Impossible to put down ... There's tension, injustice, young love, hypocrisy ... and, above all, the certainty that Silvey has planted himself in the landscape as one of our finest storytellers." (Australian Women’s Weekly)

NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING TONI COLLETTE AND HUGO WEAVING

Summer, 1965.

Late one night, thirteen-year-old Charlie Bucktin is startled by a knock on his window.

His visitor is Jasper Jones. Rebellious, mixed-race and solitary, Jasper is intriguing. And he needs Charlie’s help. In the dead of night, the boys steal through town, and Charlie learns of Jasper’s horrible discovery.

Burdened by a terrible secret and the weight of a town’s suspicion, Charlie feels his world closing in.

After this summer nothing will ever be the same again.