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

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

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

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.

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.

Silvey weaves a story of romance, intrigue and racism that is "unputdownable". A perfect book to take on lazy beach holidays

Magical

Craig Silvey's much-awaited second novel is very different from the elegiac Rhubarb - but it's every bit as good, if not better... Deeply thoughtful, remarkably funny and playful.

Craig Silvey's Rhubarb was one of my favourite Australian novels of 2004 and heralded a major new voice in Australian literary fiction. His next offering in Jasper Jones is another beautifully constructed book with a page-turning narrative and outrageously good dialogue.

Jasper Jones is a riveting tale, studded with laugh-out-loud and life-affirming moments yet underpinned by a clear-eyed examination of human weaknesses and misdemeanours.

Silvey's story of a claustrophobic Australian mining town and two of its native, naïve sons is suspenseful, charming and very readable indeed

Jasper Jones confronts inhumanity and racism, as the stories of Mark Twain and Harper Lee did ... Silvey's voice is distinctive: astute, witty, angry, understanding and self-assured.

Beautifully written and one of the great Australian books of the year