Charlie Bucktin is woken up in the middle of the night in the blistering summer of 1965 by Jasper Jones, the outcast of Corrigan. Jasper takes him out passed old Mad Jack Lionel's place to where Laura Wishart, the politician's daughter, hangs dead from a tree. What occurs afterwards is an exploration of racism, death, first loves, and the ties that bind small town life together.
Jasper Jones was heavily hyped for me and, as a result, I maybe didn't enjoy it as much as I might have. Craig Silvey's certainly a good writer, but he tends to labour in a lot of exposition and while the story starts with a bang, it takes a long time for it to drive forwards after the boys uncover Laura's body. Silvey spends a lot of time exploring small town life - everything from odd, household punishments to the heavy racism that dominated Corrigan during the Vietnam War and this is both the ultimate strength of the novel and it's downfall too. It's an atmospheric story, and the moments between Charlie and Laura's sister, Eliza, are entirely darling (their banter about traveling is so sweet).
Likewise, Jeffery Lu, Charlie's best friend, is a great and compelling character, managing to snag a lot of the best lines of dialogue, and I both didn't appreciate and did the fact that he was never really roped into the Wishart family drama. That said, Charlie's mother never rang true for me at all, being a biting, angry woman with few redeeming qualities. Her shrill, aggressive nature added little to the story, and the pages and pages we got of her punishing Charlie were both dull and frustrating.
In many ways, I think this would be a better film than a book. It's not that Craig Silvey's not a talented writer - he definitely is! - there was just a lot of emotion and a lot of real visual sensibilities in this book that I can't help but feel would be represented beautifully in on screen. Silvey's writing thrives in these quieter, small town moments, and I think an adaptation has the potential to be pretty sublime.
3 out of 5 Mad Jack peaches.
No comments:
Post a Comment