Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey

Courtesy Allen&Unwin

This award-winning coming-of-age novel was written by Australian Craig Silvey out of his passion for the southern gothic fiction of Twain, Lee and Capote.

In an interview with his publisher Allen & Unwin, Silvey summarises his novel as “coming-of-age, regional mystery novel, stuffed inside a nervous little love story, garnished with family drama and adolescent escapism and anguish.”

Set in the mid-sixties in Corrigan, a fictional small regional town of Western Australia, Jasper Jones opens with 13-year-old Charlie Bucktin reading Twain’s Puddínhead Wilson under lamplight in the sweltering heat of the night.

He is disturbed by an urgent knock on the window. It is Jasper Jones, an older Aboriginal boy who Charlie has never crossed paths with but has admired from afar for his independence and sense of self. Charlie is somewhat in awe of Jasper who the town has labelled “a Thief, a Liar, a Thug, a Truant.”

Jasper needs Charlie’s help and although terrified, Charlie is excited and honoured by the request and so follows Jasper through the town to a secret hiding spot in the bush where what he sees will change his life forever.

Locked into a secret pact with Jasper, Charlie starts to see everything around him through different eyes: his so-called close-knit family, the blatant racism of the honourable citizens of his country town, the true meaning of friendship and the possibility of first love.

Characters in Jasper Jones

Charlie Bucktin is the voice in Jasper Jones.  He is a nerdy, intelligent, sensitive, book-loving and somewhat unpopular 13-year-old boy who is easy to admire.  Certain aspects of Charlie are autobiographical as Silvey was raised in small-town Western Australia where he had to hide his geeky love of books from the world.

Charlie’s best friend is Jeffrey Lu, a 12-year old Vietnamese immigrant whose passion for cricket is obsessive, but optimism in the light of constant racism is admirable. 

Silvey describes Jeffrey as potentially his greatest literary creation and it is easy to see why.  The banter between the two friends as they discuss cricket and debate superheroes is thick, fast and hilarious.  The scene where Jeffrey realises his cricketing dream is brilliant.

Jasper Jones is the third main character in the novel and portrayed as the town’s scapegoat.  Stereotyped and misunderstood, Jasper is a teenage boy desperate to seek justice in an unforgiving town. He successfully sweeps the reader along in his quest for understanding.

Themes in Jasper Jones

Jasper Jones is set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War when racial issues were the talk of the town. It is Jeffrey and his family who receive the brunt of this hostility, though some is saved for the Aboriginal Jasper.

Jasper Jones also tackles first love, growing up, family unity and the sense of belonging in a community.

Acclaim for Jasper Jones

Young Australian author Craig Silvey has won a bag of awards for this novel. In 2010 it won both the Literary Fiction Book of the Year and the Book of the Year in the Australian Book Industry Awards. It was also shortlisted for both the Miles Franklin Literary Award and the NSW Premier's Literary Award - Christina Stead Prize for Fiction.

Prior to this it also won the Overall Winner, Indie Book of the Year Award 2009 and the Indie Book of the Year 2009 - Fiction. It was also the Winner for Fiction 2009 for the Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards.

In 2011 the book was shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and in 2012, received the Michael L. Printz Honor Award.

About Craig Silvey

Craig Silvey was born in the small country town of Dwellingup.  He first hit the limelight when Fremantle Press published Rhubarb in 2004. In 2005, Rhubarb was chosen as the “One Book” for the Perth International Writers’ Festival and found its way to every public library in Western Australia.

In 2008, The World According to Warren was shortlisted for the Children’s Book Council of Australia Crichton Award. This children’s book stars the guide dog from Rhubarb.

Jasper Jones (Allen and Unwin, 2009, ISBN: 9781742372624, 368 pages).

Reference: http://www.allenandunwin.com/

My rating: ★★★★★

Dog Boy by Eva Hornung

Courtesy Text Publishing

Dog Boy by Eva Hornung was the winner of the 2010 Prime Minister’s Literary Award in the fiction category, and deservedly so.

This extraordinary tale is about a four-year-old boy named Romochka who is abandoned by his uncle in the midst of a freezing Moscow winter and is left to fend for himself on the streets. He joins a pack of feral dogs to survive.

Out of sheer starvation, Romochka ventures out on the streets but no-one takes any notice of him and he is afraid to approach strangers and does not ask for help, until he sees the dogs.

From the moment this novel begins the reader is left asking the questions, how can humans be so cruel to their own family? How can an uncle leave a small boy of four to survive through a winter without any food or warmth? How can people not help a lost child?

When Romochka becomes lost and desperate, it is the dogs that find him and persuade him to follow them home to their lair. They offer him shelter, warmth, affection and food through the mother-figure Mamochka, who suckles him along with her four other pups through that first winter.

What follows is an amazing story of Romochka’s transition into a dog boy. It is not an easy story to read as Hornung holds nothing back in the detail of her writing and how it must be to live with feral dogs.

The sheer desolation, grit and filth of where they live, the putrid smells, the revolting food that is taken from rubbish dumps or freshly-caught vermin they crunch between their teeth is at times enough to make your stomach heave.

But this is also a story of love and family, of belonging and hope, and challenges us as readers and humans to question our society and the way humans treat each other.  It is a truly amazing book and highly recommended.

The Idea for Dog Boy

We have all heard stories of children that have been raised by animals and it is one such story, of a boy who lived with dogs in Moscow, that was the seed for Hornung’s story.  She has also drawn on the legendary myth of Romulus and Remus who were suckled by wolves.

In an interview with Goodreading Magazine March 2009, Hornung said that the “whole combination of the disintegration of a society, extreme environmental conditions, and exploring the boundary between human and animal is a pretty potent one, and one that really got me going.”

For Hornung to immerse herself in the writing of the book, she studied Russian and travelled to Moscow.  And she takes us with her in the novel. We can see the streets, the Metro, feel the freezing snow, the winter darkness and smell the desperation of the homeless and poor.

She obviously also spent a lot of time researching the behaviour of dogs, in particular feral packs, and makes us see how things are, or how things must be. Whether right or wrong the book had me looking at my own dog in a different light.

About Eva Hornung

Eva Hornung has produces books before under the name of Eva Sallis but has returned to her maiden name for Dog Boy.  Previous works include the best-selling Hiam which won the 1997 Australian/Vogel Literary Award and the 1999 Nita May Dobbie Literary Award. Other novels include The City of Sealions (2002), Mahjar (2003), Fire Fire (2005) and The Marsh Birds (2006).

Dog Boy (Text Publishing Melbourne, 2009, ISBN: 9781921520099, 290 pages.)

My rating: ★★★★★

Trip of a Lifetime by Liz Byrski

Courtesy Pan Macmillan

When a female politician is shot as she leaves her workplace, her life and the lives of the people closest to her are blown apart.

Heather Delaney survives the shooting but it is the repercussions of the crime that is the real story behind Liz Byrski’s fourth novel Trip of a Lifetime.

Trip of a Lifetime

The tension builds when the crime is not solved. Heather struggles to return to work not knowing if she is safe and why she was targeted. Her ability to hold it together fails on many occasions.  Her political assistant Shaun, who was present at the shooting, picks up the pieces for her while his personal life is crumbling. Shaun is struggling with his relationship to a woman who has a drug problem and who has hassled her way into his life, constantly hinting at a marriage he has no interest in.

Heather’s brother Adam and his wife Jill are older parents whose struggle to come to terms with the shooting runs parallel to the stress of trying to balance family life with young children, work and job satisfaction and a successful marriage.  The fact that the safety net they have built around their lives has been penetrated is both terrifying and real.

The oldest couple in the novel, Barbara and George, bring a warmth that the other characters lack.  Barbara, Heather and Adam’s aunt, is in her seventies, has never married but is in a wonderful loving relationship with her neighbour George. Together they have plans for a huge adventure and seem to cope best with the crime.  They are comfortable in their own skin and able to deal with what life throws their way.

Themes in Trip of a Lifetime

One of the main themes running through the novel is the keeping of secrets: how we carry secrets through our lives to either protect ourselves or others and how this can determine the type of person we are.  Some secrets are big, some are small and some grow larger with each year that they are buried.

The novel also explores the bonds that people have, in this case Heather and Adam, when they share a deep secret.  This bond excludes Jill, who often feels she is the third person in the partnership.

Other themes Byrski explores include the set roles that men and women play and what happens when these are reversed, the place of religion in childhood, self-discovery and fulfilment, and the tolerance of relationships in the elderly.

Women in Byrski’s Novels

Byrski’s main protagonists are often women in their fifties or older who are doing interesting things with their lives.  Her novels strike a cord with women of all ages and her works are very popular amongst book clubs as they throw up a host of questions that are ripe for debate. 

In Trip of a Lifetime, the main character Heather is a single woman who has never been married but has had men in her life.  She is stubborn, unhappy with her size, good at her job and following the shooting, craves the support of a partner.  She is not necessarily a likeable character but as the novel progresses we get a better understanding of how a life-long secret has shaped her.

The return of her ex-boyfriend Ellis to offer her comfort and love when she most needs support will make the reader squirm.  As an independent woman use to being on her own, change is a challenge and Heather digs deep to see her way to the end of her journey.

Trip of a Lifetime is an enjoyable read with characters that are both likeable and realistic. 

About Liz Byrski

Born in London and raised in Sussex, Liz Byrski moved to Australia in 1981 and currently resides in Perth, Western Australia.  She is the author of eleven works of non-fiction and five novels and has over 40 years experience in the media. 

Previous novels include: Gang of Four; Food, Sex and Money and Belly Dancing for Beginners.  Her latest novel is entitled Bad Behaviour.

Trip of a Lifetime (Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Limited, 2008, ISBN 978-1-4050-3827-0, 343 pages.)

My rating: ★★★★

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler

My first Chandler book and first venture into noir crime fiction. Has to be up there with Spike Milligan for the best one-liners ever. Chandler writes so well you feel wet through from all the rain and your clothes reek from the cigarettes. Follow the adventures of tough guy private investigator Philip Marlowe as he deals with blackmail, gambling, pornography and murder. "Two coffees," I said. "Black, strong and made this year." Good fun!

My rating: ★★★★