True History of the Kelly Gang

Rating:
Summary: Captures the soul of a legend
Review: Australian author and two-time Booker Prize winner Peter Carey was inspired to write "True History of the Kelly Gang" when he saw an exhibit containing a series of paintings of the outlaw and folk legend Ned Kelly. Kelly was born in 1855 in a remote section of the Australian colony of Victoria and raised in a life of hardship. His bootlegger mother apprenticed him at an early age to the bushranger Harry Power, where Kelly learned the skills that served him well when hiding from the law later on. He wound up in and out of prison and soon became the most wanted man in the area. At the age of 26, he was captured and executed.

Through the fictionalized account of Kelly and his family, Carey has done a masterful job of showing the oppression of the poor by the English and their persecution by the police. Like an Australian Robin Hood, Kelly decried the ill treatment of the poor and came to their defense; he desperately wanted his voice to be heard. Now Carey has let us hear it. He portrays Kelly as a sympathetic character who has the best of intentions even though he becomes embroiled in a life of crime and violence. Because of Kelly's portrayal in a heroic light, this novel is somewhat controversial in Australia, where some people are embarrassed to have Kelly represent their nation. Talking about Australia's origins, Carey said in an interview "Your ship was the Mayflower. Ours were the convict ships, and each ship determined the nation's character." Controversy or not, Kelly's legend lives on and is skillfully brought to life in this book.

The novel is constructed as a series of personal accounts by Kelly addressed to his daughter. The contents and condition of each manuscript is provided as a preface to each chapter, and it makes this story seem very realistic; so much so that I had difficulty distinguishing what was fact and what was fiction. The rich narrative is full of folklore and local history. There are many humorous passages, such as where men ride around disguised in women's dresses. Using as an example an actual 56-page treatise written by Kelly, Carey has captured the authentic voice of the folk hero. As a result, the story is moderately difficult to read because of misspellings, lack of punctuation, and use of colloquialisms of that era. But the reader will soon become accustomed to the cadence of the language and will be rewarded with a colorful tale that captures the soul of a country and its national legend.

Eileen Rieback

Rating:
Summary: Captures the soul of a legend
Review: Australian author and two-time Booker Prize winner Peter Carey was inspired to write "True History of the Kelly Gang" when he saw an exhibit containing a series of paintings of the outlaw and folk legend Ned Kelly. Kelly was born in 1855 in a remote section of the Australian colony of Victoria and raised in a life of hardship. His bootlegger mother apprenticed him at an early age to the bushranger Harry Power, where Kelly learned the skills that served him well when hiding from the law later on. He wound up in and out of prison and soon became the most wanted man in the area. At the age of 26, he was captured and executed.

Through the fictionalized account of Kelly and his family, Carey has done a masterful job of showing the oppression of the poor by the English and their persecution by the police. Like an Australian Robin Hood, Kelly decried the ill treatment of the poor and came to their defense; he desperately wanted his voice to be heard. Now Carey has let us hear it. He portrays Kelly as a sympathetic character who has the best of intentions even though he becomes embroiled in a life of crime and violence. Because of Kelly's portrayal in a heroic light, this novel is somewhat controversial in Australia, where some people are embarrassed to have Kelly represent their nation. Talking about Australia's origins, Carey said in an interview "Your ship was the Mayflower. Ours were the convict ships, and each ship determined the nation's character." Controversy or not, Kelly's legend lives on and is skillfully brought to life in this book.

The novel is constructed as a series of personal accounts by Kelly addressed to his daughter. The contents and condition of each manuscript is provided as a preface to each chapter, and it makes this story seem very realistic; so much so that I had difficulty distinguishing what was fact and what was fiction. The rich narrative is full of folklore and local history. There are many humorous passages, such as where men ride around disguised in women's dresses. Using as an example an actual 56-page treatise written by Kelly, Carey has captured the authentic voice of the folk hero. As a result, the story is moderately difficult to read because of misspellings, lack of punctuation, and use of colloquialisms of that era. But the reader will soon become accustomed to the cadence of the language and will be rewarded with a colorful tale that captures the soul of a country and its national legend.

Eileen Rieback

Rating:
Summary: An Adjectival Wonder
Review: History has always been written by the victors of wars, those adhering to the prevailing ideology of the day, or the survivors. In Peter Carey's new novel, the best this wonderful writer has yet produced, history gets told by Ned Kelly, the mythic Australian bush-ranger, who is none of those things. The result, Carey tells us, is a "true" history, told in the first-person voice of Kelly, a voice of Faulknerian sweep and rhythm written in a style based on real surviving letters in Kelly's own hand. And what a voice it is. Sentences run on, they lack punctuation or accurate grammar, they fold into themselves, or whip from emotion to emotion, subject to subject. Yet Carey is always in control of the sentence, using it to charm, inform,and manipulate.

The precise nature of Ned Kelly's lawlessness is central to Carey's book, for most of Kelly's crimes are seen as reactions against a cruel and unjust system being enacted against immigrants by the predominantly British system in Australia. For example, when Kelly is accused of stealing another horse, but when the case comes to trial the dates do not match up, the accused being out of the area when the theft was alleged to have taken place. The result of the trial is still a conviction. Kelly is found "guilty of receiving a horse not yet legally stolen." Finally, when Ned Kelly and his three companions are being hunted for the attempted murder of a policeman-something Kelly denies in his history-there is a shootout at Stringybark Creek resulting in the deaths of three constables. Kelly realizes that the only way to discourage the locals from turning them in is to pay them more than the reward money being offered by the authorities. After some audacious bank robberies to raise such funds the Kelly gang are cornered in Mrs. Jones' hotel in Glenrowan. Three are killed and Kelly is captured in his newly created(and now iconic) suit of armor. In 1880 he was tried and hanged. Kelly is a victim, like Jack Maggs in Carey's last novel, of a system that pulls him into a life of crime and judicial punishment. As Maggs is apprenticed to a house-breaker in Victorian London, so Kelly is apprenticed to a bush-ranger in this novel. They struggle, feeling that they can escape their lot in life, but the system pulls them down. Both men explain themselves--Maggs in the invisible writing he leaves for his errant adopted son, and Kelly in his "true history."

Carey's epigram in this book is taken from William Faulkner: "The past is not dead. It is not even past." This is his theme, for Carey is examining what it meant to be Australian in the last century and, by association, what it means today. Is it any different? Australia is still under the sovereign rule of Britain, the Republic still not realized. Carey's focus on post-colonialism and the struggle for Australian identity has clarified with every novel he has written, and it has never been clearer than here. The past is not dead, but it continues. Australia is still not free today, just as it was not free in Kelly's time. The sense of injustice in this book, and in this situation is prevalent.

But do not think this an overly serious or difficult book, because Carey has always been a wonderful story-teller and entertainer. There is abundant action and humor in this novel, and it comes at a great pace. The description of the Australian outback is vivid and sensual, bringing to life the harsh beauty of the country, the loud blackness of the bush night, and the roaring life of rivers in flood. Even the explanations of Kelly's difficult situation are couched in native terms that ring with truth and beauty. For example, when Kelly confesses that he can't imagine the forces stirred against him, he describes himself as "a plump witchetty grub beneath the bark not knowing that the kookaburra exists unable to imagine that fierce beak or the punishment in that wild and angry eye." Throughout the telling the voice of Kelly is dominant, Carey disappearing masterfully behind his narrator. Detail is immaculately and consistently observed. Kelly is obsessed it seems with numbers, for example. He gives ages and dimensions meticulously. Also, and effectively given the violence of the story and the reputation of Kelly himself, there is a winning sense of decorum in Kelly's refusal to report strong language. Instead we get b----r, and b----y, and most notably the replacement of all other swear words with the cover-all term "adjectival." Each chapter is a "found" document, Kelly's writings being made on any available paper stock tell his story, and pulled together after his capture and execution. Kelly's civil disobedience, while often violent in nature, is grounded in an sense of moral injustice that breeds a sturdy stoicism. Kelly is the hero we identify with and the forces of imperialism and societal intolerance that we read of in this book are the historical factors that forced him into being, in all his conflicted fatalism. In the "true" history of the Kelly gang it is made clear that this past is not dead but still with us. If Carey's novel is particularly Australian, his theme is universal.

Rating:
Summary: A Voice For The Reader...
Review: I didn't like this book at all!!! There is rarely a sentence where the author did not quote the main players as saying such nonsense as "We got the adjectival horse out of the barn..." For heavens sakes!!! Also, he uses this commonly, "Let's just shoot the b____g". So what? If your senses are offended by swearing, leave it out. I think this book was written while the author was asleep. It is jerky and hard to read and relatively uninteresting (which is a feat considering the setting of old Australia). Don't waste your time. This is an adjectival book.

Rating:
Summary: A Voice For The Reader...
Review: I didn't like this book at all!!! There is rarely a sentence where the author did not quote the main players as saying such nonsense as "We got the adjectival horse out of the barn..." For heavens sakes!!! Also, he uses this commonly, "Let's just shoot the b____g". So what? If your senses are offended by swearing, leave it out. I think this book was written while the author was asleep. It is jerky and hard to read and relatively uninteresting (which is a feat considering the setting of old Australia). Don't waste your time. This is an adjectival book.

Rating:
Summary: As Good as Any Booker
Review: I picked up this book with expectation so high. Recommended by a friend, a Booker Prize winner and a book by Peter Carey. Too much expectations a book would carry. In the end the book delivered.
I found this book very interesting to read the first 200 pages. A lot of action & adventure & cute stupidity.
The next pages show the man ignorance & his real stupidity & boring newspaper clippings.
Carey however is a very fine writer, he managed to make such a famous story about Ned Kelly worth reading even when we knew the ending and the storyline

Rating:
Summary: Peter Carey's novel attempts to find Ned Kelly's voice
Review: I suspect for many Americans their first introduction to the legend of Ned Kelly was when the Australian icon of his helmet was incorporated into the opening ceremonies of the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Of course there are those who knew of Kelly from Tony Richardson's 1970 film "Ned Kelly," where Mick Jagger played the title role, or even the 1993 film "Reckless Kelly" with Yahoo, which updated the Kelly legend, for lack of a better word, to the present. That idea that Kelly is the Robin Hood of Australia is enough of a touchstone for most to understand Kelly's importance to the Australian psyche, but there are those who consider him to be nothing more than a glorified outlaw, more like Jesse James than Robin Hood. Significantly, those views break down all ethnic lines, with Irish-Australians seeing the hero and Anglo-Australians insisting on the villain. Gregor Jordan's 2003 film "Ned Kelly," based on Robert Drewe's "Our Sunshine" and starring well known Australian actors Heath Ledger, Geoffrey Rush and Naomi Watts will renew interest in the true story and may well lead viewers to this volume.

Peter Carey's "True History of the Kelly Gang" is, despite the title a fictional novel which won the Booker Prize in 2001. The novel is inspired in part by Sidney Nolan's famous series of paintings of Ned Kelly and is told in a first person narrative style that is based on Kelly's own "Jerilderie Letter," which provided his version of the events that led to him being an outlaw with a 8,000 pound reward on his head, the largest in the world up to that time. The conceit is that Kelly has written these words, intended them to be read by a daughter who was born and raised in California, trying to explain his life.

Carey's book is not a substitute for the true history it purports to be, including people and events that are not part of the historical record (to wit, Mary and the baby), as he attempts to connect the dots of Ned Kelly's life. Ultimately this is a character study wherein Carey emphasizes Kelly's strong Irish-Australian identity, his fierce loyalty to family and friends, and his native wit and inherent shrewdness. We know from the letters he dictated and the transcript of his trial that Kelly was intelligent and Carey plays that up throughout the book, because essentially what is happening here is that he is justifying the icon image of Kelly that exists in the popular mind of Australia. At the same time there is humanizing, for Kelly has a strong attachment to his mother and forges a new relationship with his brother Dan as the Kelly Gang heads towards its fate. He also hates the English as much as they hate them, which is no mean feat. In the end what you get out of this book is not Ned Kelly's story but rather his voice, although its authenticity is, of course, open to debate.

Ultimately "True History of the Kelly Gang" is not meant as an introduction to the story of Ned Kelly. Jordan's film is out on DVD now so it can serve that function as others as it did for me. Carey will give us more of a notion of what Kelly might have been thinking and certainly a more complete picture of the world in which Kelly lived and died. The climax of this book is not the battle at Glenrowan but a conversation with a school teacher named Curnow, who is able to raise questions that go beyond the legal points on which Kelly's trial, convinction, and execution turned. This is a discussion held through the prism of history and needs to be read in that light and reaffirms once again the cultural axiom "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."






Rating:
Summary: brilliant
Review: I will confess it took me a long time to get into this novel. The first couple of pages I thought: oh god. No.

I tend to be prejudiced against novels written in dialect, or with a local accent, or any other similarly quaint style. I find such affectations irritating, and consider them to be a bit of a cheat, a literary parlour trick: doing a global search'n'replace to change "isn't" to "ain't" is a hell of a lot easier than, say, character development.

So when I realised that the hero of the True History of the Kelly Gang was writing in the style of a semi-literate rural Australian of two hundred years ago, I cringed. I couldn't help it.

There isn't a single comma in the damn book, for crying out loud!

I picked the book up. I shortly set the book down. And then, after months had gone by, got around to picking it up again.

Wow.

Once one gets used to the style - having lived in Australia, the localisms were easy for me to pick up, but there were still plenty of words I'd never seen before - one gets sucked in. The story is inherently engaging - Ned Kelly didn't become a folkloric hero by being dull. Carey creates a cast of charismatic larrikins, a vivid landscape out of grey trees and brown rivers, an adventure to rival any cowboy movie, as Ned and his fugitive gang outwit the police and escape through the bush.

But this is no simple yarn.

Within is concealed a critique of the class structure which mired the Kellys in poverty, a dissertation on the histories of Australia and Ireland, a study in ethics vs. the law.

Not to mention the power of words. Language is Kelly's redemption, and his weakness. He owns one book, but devours it repeatedly until it falls apart in the rain. He writes letters to parliament, seeks to publish pamphlets, knowing that the way to win over the people is to tell his story. Of course, the powers that be know this equally well.

So I didn't just "get used to" the punctuation (or lack thereof). Ned Kelly is a born story teller. His voice, as imagined by carey, has a rhythm and lilt that feels not only authentic and true to the casual conversational manner of its owner, but also transcends its idiosyncracies to achieve beauty, to approach, at times, a stream-of-consciousness poetry:

Snuffing the candle we both come out onto the front veranda and there we seen the undertakers smudged as charcoal in the rain an army of invaders riding round the flank of our familiar hills. As dan were hurrying towards the creek I turned to follow but Mary Hearn touched my hand what bliss what torture she loves me yet she loves me through the drizzling rain.
What initially I feared would be a chore to get through, grew quickly into a compelling read. Who needs commas, anyway?

Rating:
Summary: Check out the audio
Review: Like many books written in the vernacular, this one is absolutely wonderful on audio, in this case read by Gianfranco Negroponte. As one reviewer said, the voice Carey creates for Australian outlaw Ned Kelly is the novel's singular achievement. Listening to Negroponte's skillful reading, you literally hear that voice, plus you're relieved of struggling with the lack of punctuation. Highly recommended. Riveting throughout, and in the end, very touching.

Rating:
Summary: The song of Australia
Review: Mr Carey's novel relates the epic life of Ned Kelly in Australia in the second half of the 19th century. The text comes in the form of 13 parcels of varying length (from 7 to 50 pages). Sometimes they are sheets of National Bank or Bank of New South Wales letterhead, a cloth booklet, octavo pages, open envelopes providing space for text, a pocket diary or the reverse side of advertising fliers. They cover Ned's adventurous life until the manuscript abruptly terminates when he was 26 years old and it is told in a tone so wild and passionate that the reader often believes that the bushranger is speaking to him from the grave! It is a breathtaking account of an existence marked by a cascade of events where Ned is in turn a reformer, a criminal, a horse thief, a farmer, a bushranger and an orphan. Ned's voice is very convincing, continually creating new surprises on every page despite the plainness of his language, or rather perhaps because of it. Actually his uneducated voice is very much part of the originality of Mr Carey's novel.
The critics have ranked Mr Carey next to Charles Dickens and Lawrence Sterne - very rightly so, in my opinion.