Rating: 
Summary: Well...not ENTIRELY terrible, but...
Review: This book is simply a rather boring western. It's not a history book, so you won't learn anything about 19th c. Australia from reading it. It's an interesting use of the vernacular but you will sometimes find yourself reading sentences more than once in order to get the drift. It's basically a lot of whining about being poor, oppressed and Irish - battling against those ... English ...Anyway, I was cruising along, thinking the book was mildly interesting, if a bit slow - then I came to the part about the torture of the horse. Somehow I managed to finish the book after that, although I'm not quite sure how I did it. It wasn't sad or emotionally moving, it was just plain sickening. So, what started out as a "different" book eventually became just a typical junky western, which always seems to have either a brutal rape or a scene of incredible cruelty toward an animal. Big surprise. Big disappointment.
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Summary: True History of the Kelly Gang Review
Review: From the first sentence of the novel, True History of the Kelly Gang, by Peter Carey, I couldn't put the book down. Reading this novel is like watching the movie Apollo 13 or Titanic. The reader knows how the story will end before it begins, however, I think this is an advantage upon which Carey capitalizes. The novel does not just retell an age old story, but uses that story to delve into many other aspects of life including loyalty, love, duty, responsibility, and betrayal. The book opens with the statement: "I lost my own father at 12 yr. of age and know what it is to be raised on lies and silences my dear daughter you are presently too young to understand a word I write but this history is for you and will contain no single lie may I burn in Hell if I speak false." Carey's idea to tell Kelly's story in the form of a diary written to his daughter in order to communicate his side THE KELLY OUTRAGE, was brilliant. One of the main points of the novel is a discussion of truth, perception, and how history is really just a biased, if not completely falsified, account of events. Kelly "writes" his history because does not want his daughter to be raised on the same lies and silences (suppressions of the truth) that he endured as a child. Through Kelly, the reader also sees the oppression, suffering, poverty, and abuse of the Australian people by the officials sent from the Motherland, Enland, to maintain order in its colony. While it took some time to get used to Carey's style and lack of commons, after the first chapter I found a rhythm and no longer struggled. I think his style added authenticity to the story. For me, the story felt so real I kept forgetting that it was fiction.
Rating:
Summary: Rollicking Fun
Review: True History of the Kelly Gang is a rollicking adventure based on a true story that perhaps most outside of Australia have never heard of. Carey brings it to us with lively prose from the "voice" of Ned Kelly. Ned was a semi-educated, adventurous man and thus his "voice" is not in the Queen's English, shall we say. If that is going to annoy you, it is probably best to stay away from this novel. If not, this work is great fun, an entertaining story about a unique individual. This work reminded me, in a way, of Larry McMurtry's western novels. It has the same feel of an untamed, barely governed land filled with semi-legitimate folks. Enjoy.
Rating: 
Summary: Waste of Time-- Felt REALLY Cheated
Review: I had hoped to learn about Ned Kelly and Australia in the 19th century. If that is your goal, this is probably not the book for you. Imagine a tale told in first person by someone with an age 12 maturity and practically no writing skills. That's what this book is: fragmented, immature commentary that is VERY hard to follow. For all art, there's the medium that conveys the message. Carey selected a medium that drowns the message. Image the book "Treasure Island" entirely written in unpunctuated pirate talk (Aye, me hardies!) with no relief of intelligent prose. That's this book. Would give this book a zero rating if it were a choice. The Booker Prize committee must have been drunk.
Rating:
Summary: Hard not to feel cheated
Review: Knowing nothing about Ned Kelly and his times, I picked up this book to learn about him and Australia in the 19th century. If that is your goal, this is probably not the book for you: I learned little. A person would need a great deal of background about Kelly and Australian geography and history already to get much from this book.
And the style of writing chosen was so incredibly unreadable. Imagine a tale told in first person by someone with an age 12 maturity and limited writing skills. That's what this book is: fragmented, immature commentary that is VERY hard to follow. For all art, there's the medium that conveys the message. Carey selected a medium that drowns-- actually, destroys in the case-- the message. Image the book "Treasure Island" entirely written in unpunctuated pirate talk (Aye, me hearties!) with no relief of intelligent prose. That's this book.
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Summary: Son of the soil
Review: Ned Kelly may not be everyone's hero, but he certainly comes across as a very compelling character in Peter Carey's novel. I guess Kelly has haunted the Australian mind, as Jesse James has the American mind. This is really a contemporary tale, as it is being told from a retrospective point of view, through his letters. Ned Kelly is seen in modern terms. I didn't know very much about the Kelly gang before reading Carey's account, but have since picked up bits and pieces off the web. Carey stuck pretty closely to the actual events. Where he embellished was in his attempt to ferret out the character of this misunderstood lad, who was a rogue to some and a hero to others. Basically, we get the hard life of Australia. The second and third generations of the convict labourers, scratching out their lives in the sun-baked soil of the outback, doing what they can to survive. Ned's mother is at the heart of this story. An Oedipal relationship, which Carey artfully played with. It is her series of bad choices, which ultimately leads Ned into his life of crime. But, like a good boy, Ned chooses to blame all the men her life, not dear old mom for selling him to the devil. Carey is a wonderful writer. The images are very compelling. He seems to get into the skin of his characters, which is such a great pleasure to read. I imagine this was a difficult book for him to do, as Ned Kelly is one of those characters you would normally have to tread softly on because of the mythical status he now has in Australia. But, Carey put his boots on and waded into the story, deconstructing many of the myths that surround Ned, and succeeding, I thought, in finding the "true story" of this unfortunate son of the soil.
Rating: 
Summary: Good story but hard to read
Review: Peter Carey's book won the Booker Prize last year. That's why I picked it up. It's a great story, but Carey wrote it "authentically" - as if it were written by Ned Kelly himself. The only problem with that is that, in Ned's own words, he doesn't know how to parse. The lack of punctuation almost drove me crazy. If you can get past that, the story is worth the time.
Rating: 
Summary: A Lot Better Than Mick Jagger Did It
Review: An incredible novel, well deserving of the awards Peter Carey has collected for his brilliant work. I'm at a loss as to how anybody could not have heard of Ned Kelly unless they have never ventured outside American culture. Even then, he was so concerned about his role in history, so similar to the wild west American culture heros, that he should have come up at some point. Come on folks, the movie starred Mick Jagger......! The fictional collection of papers representing a "biography" of Ned Kelly's gang is a well worn and proven literary device that places the reader firmly in the time period and (much more importantly in this case) into the mental framework from which Kelly's actions occured. It really does help you sort of ooze into his state of mind, which is essential to understanding why many of his actions occurred. For example, the poignant scene where the adolescent Ned, clueless about women or social conventions, manages to do the right thing by buying a dress for his sweetheart Mary Hearn is enough to tear your heart out. And the language.....ah, the poetry.....how can anyone complain about the grammar or the outback colloquialisms that provide the rich texture that absolutely *makes* the story? It's like complaining that Shakespeare is too hard to understand in the original Elizabethan English or Whitman is difficult because he wrote poetry. When Carey can write things like, "When our brave parents was ripped from Ireland like teeth from the mouth of their own history....." you have to respect the hard guts that come with it....true to real Irish culture....the music, the pubs, just *being* Irish. Now, having had my rant on the Irish part, do you really want me to start on the Australian experience? I'm not Australian (although I did buy this book at LAX to read on my first flight down under), but Carey is and has obviously paid attention to the hard stuff there too. Being mistreated, unfairness, lack of respect.....it's what makes OZ take your breath away. It's what has firmly placed the spirit of the aboriginal past as part of the national culture, it's what makes Australia a place to cherish....not perfect, never nice, but always fighting and eventually making things as right as they can be for now. So, no Ned Kelly is not always a likeable person, but I bet you aren't either. He's illiterate but Carey gives him such a strong human spirit that he manages to come close to the greats of that art....Shakespeare, Faulkner, Whitman....and all the rest.
Rating:
Summary: If I could turn back time.....
Review: To start, I would like to clarify any following statements with this disclaimer: This isn't my 'sort' of book. I don't often like biography style novels, and am not a big fan of tales of the bushrangers and cowboys of the past. I am really, truly sorry I read this book. I didn't enjoy it at all. This 'humour' I repeatedly hear of in other reviews was difficult for me to find, aside from perhaps three small moments in the nearly 400 pages. Mostly it was a story of misery, both on the narrators part, and mine. This story is about a hard, unfair life, full of hard, unfair people. Not only are these people hard and unfair, however, they're probably clinically schizophrenic. Someone would hate Kelly one minute, want to dance with him the next, and then the third minute they were trying to destroy him and everyone he loves. His mother tried to hit him with a 2x4, but then apparently changed her mind and hugged him. It makes one understand why Prozac was invented, if our ancestors were so prone to mood swings. Indeed, it is true things were much different back then. And the book is very colourful in its portrayal of the bitter world at its fullest. But I can't help but feel like the exaggeration is extreme, and perhaps partially so we can feel a little better about the state of ourselves. "Well golly, what barbarians we were! How far we've come!" Even if the book is 100% accurate, the writing was tedious to read, constantly requiring one to read over sentances a second time to clarify who went where, what, when and how. It was the nature of the narrator and the style of the novel, but not all styles, no matter how appropriate to the tone, are worth reading. It was also inconsistant at times. I've known many people quite well educated who didn't know what the word 'discombobulated' means, though perhaps Kelly had special reason to know many terms for the word 'confused'. The technique of summarizing the chapters was also irritating, I found, because I disliked the book so much, I didn't want to keep reading it. It made it so much more tempting to just skip to the next chapter, because I already know what's going to happen in this one. Perhaps if the reader was more enthused than I was, they would just have their interest piqued by each small blurb. I can only guess. I never skipped ahead, though, and faithfully read it cover to cover. The best part of my experience was closing the book for the final time. It's sort of like surviving a war. This book has won the Booker prize, and I've heard many favourable things (including the reviews I read through on here). But I give warning to any who are not sure it is their 'sort' of book either. Look around a bit more, because this trial is not for the faint of heart.
Rating:
Summary: an amazing achievement
Review: The first half of this book is pitch perfect, one of the most impressive displays of narrative fiction I have ever come across. I found Mr. Carey's decision to omit punctuation and employ the vernacular to be absolutely seductive, and I easily fell into the rhythm of the prose. It was out and out fun to read. My only quibble is that he seems to have relaxed his prose style a bit as the book drew to its end, and Kelly as a grown man was less nuanced than Kelly the boy and apprentice outlaw. But that in no way speaks against buying and relishing this novel. What a wonderful work.
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