Product Description

In a dazzling act of ventriloquism, Peter Carey gives Ned Kelly a voice so wild, passionate and original that it is impossible not to believe that the famous bushranger himself is speaking from beyond the grave. True History of the Kelly Gang is the song of Australia, and it sings its protest in a voice at once crude and delicate, menacing and heart-wrenching. Carey gives us Ned Kelly as orphan, as Oedipus, as horse thief, farmer, bushranger, reformer, bank-robber, police-killer and, finally, as his country's beloved Robin Hood.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12910 in Books
• Published on: 2004-08-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
In True History of the Kelly Gang Peter Carey returns to the harsh, brutal world of Australian history, so brilliantly evoked in earlier novels such as Illywhacker and Oscar and Lucinda. Set in the desolate settler communities north of Melbourne in the late 19th century, the novel is told in the form of a journal, written by the famous outlaw and "bushranger" Ned Kelly, to a daughter he will never see. As Kelly explains, "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 lies may I burn in hell if I speak false".

The salty, colloquial, unpunctuated style of Kelly's journal is reproduced with great skill, as Carey recounts the outlaw's early life with a cross-dressing, Irish immigrant sheep worker, and a beautiful but headstrong mother, always on the wrong side of the law. Inadvertently causing the arrest and death of his father, Ned realises that "there were a drought and nothing flourishing there but misery I were the oldest son I thought it time to earn my place", a decision that ultimately leads him into conflict with the law, and to form the notorious Kelly Gang.

The novel contains some wonderfully lyrical and deeply moving moments, as Ned struggles to articulate the harsh injustice of the world around him, but some readers might find Carey's epistolary style rather restrictive and colourless after the first 100 pages, and lacking in the imaginative excitement of Carey's earlier novels. --Jerry Brotton

Review
'Peter Carey has produced some very fine novels before now, but this, I would say, is his finest.' Daily Telegraph '[Peter Carey is] without question the pre-eminent literary voice of post-colonial Australia, he loves to take risks.' Guardian 'Contains pretty much everything you could ask of a novel.' New York Times Book Review

Carey's seventh novel narrates the brief and violent life of Australian bushranger Ned Kelly. Much of the life is folk-history; the story-telling genius lies in the voice Carey has found for Ned. It is both utterly convincing and yet continually surprising, creating new pleasures on every page. Kelly's knowledge of punctuation extends no further than the full stop, so the prose hurtles along unimpeded by commas, colons, and apostrophes, spilling information before us just like an excited speaking voice. It is a voice dedicated to honesty ('this story is for you [his unseen daughter] and will contain no single lie may I burn in hell if I speak false'), direct, practical, carefully prudish ('It were eff this and ess that and she would blow their adjectival brains out'), which frequently breaks into sudden brilliance of image and colour. On the run with his beloved Mary and her sick child, Ned hears a horseman following and forces her into a hiding place in a stream, then stands waiting, gun cocked. 'A fright of blood red parrots flared and swept through the khaki forest.' Kelly's story is enough to make you weep; his father dies when he is 12, and his mother takes her tribe of children to a government land selection at 11 Mile Creek, where trees need clearing and fences building, and she sells illegal grog to make ends meet. She also sells Ned to Harry Power, who takes him out on a spree of highway robbery, which ends with 15-year-old Ned's arrest. From then on the hostility of the police to the poor Irish in general and the Kelly family in particular, is enough to foil Ned's every attempt to go straight. Kelly is a true folk hero, a bush Robin Hood, bouncing up from every setback with cartoon-character optimism - but in his language he comes alive, his deadpan humour and sharp understanding are made real, and the legend becomes a man. He describes his sweetheart Mary critically overlooking his writing as 'like a steel nibbed kookaburra on the fences in the morning sun' - a description that could equally well be applied to the authorial intelligence behind Ned's voice. Reviewed by Jane Rogers, author of Promised Lands (Kirkus UK)

About the Author
Peter Carey was born in 1943 in Australia and lives in New York. He is the author of the highly acclaimed selection of short stories. The Fat Man in History, six novels, Bliss, Illywhacker, Oscar and Lucinda, The Tax Inspector, The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith and Jack Maggs, and a book for children, The Big Bazoohley. Oscar and Lucinda has been made into a film by Gillian Armstrong starring Ralph Fiennes.

Customer Reviews

Masterful portrayal of the social conditions of the time
I don't know enough about the history of Ned Kelly to comment on the historical accuracy of the events, though I gather that the novel is quite well researched. What makes the book such an enjoyable read though is the remarkable portrayal of life in colonial Australia. You get a visceral sense of how it might have felt to be poor in the dog-eat-dog world of Ned Kelly's time, of the desperate struggle to conquer the Australian bush, of the constant oppression by authorities for whom laws rarely provide an effective check on power, of the solidarity of human beings brought together by their shared trials and tribulations. Carey has managed to convey a sense of this era in a way that few writers are able to. It is a portrait of social conditions that can be compared to the novels of Charles Dickens.

work of genius
This is a truly wonderful book. The sense of place and the evocation of the era are fabulous. It's an adventure story and a love story. Above all, the absolutely incredible narrative voice make this a hilarious and also moving read.

An engaging style that brings Kelly to life
This is an absorbing book, written as a sequence of letters supposedly penned by Kelly himself - his attempt to explain his life and death to a daughter he will not live to see. Carey has written the book without punctuation in a conversational style. I quickly got used to this and found that the technique gave weight and realism to the story. Carey tells us about the paper used for each set of letters and we can imagine Kelly coming across some scraps on which he can continue his story - it is a charming touch.

Although this is a fictional work, it is so well-written and Carey's mode of writing is so persuasive that it seems entirely plausible that Ned Kelly is speaking to us from beyond the grave. I enjoyed it enormously - it is imaginative, clever and very entertaining.