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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Contains no single lie, may I burn in Hell if I speak false.",
By
This review is from: True History of the Kelly Gang (Paperback)
This is a "western" which gallops to life, and the reader feels the grit, smells the dust, and agonizes with desperate characters as they are tossed every which way, not by their own deliberate decisions so much as by the unpredictability of their Australian frontier existence.
Ned Kelly, the Jesse James of Australia, becomes human here, not a monstrous blackguard so much as a man who is forced to make impossible choices. In this tale, which purports to be the hand-written autobiography he wants to leave for his baby daughter, we follow his childhood in poverty, his reluctant "apprenticeship" to the villainous Harry Powers, his cruel imprisonment by corrupt authorities, and his attempts to stay out of trouble upon his release. The judicial system's attack on his mother, however, becomes the catalyst for Ned's life in crime, a life which the reader understands could have been completely different, had authorities simply shown more compassion. Carey is masterful in using small details to show contrasts and to make the big picture come alive. A new pair of soft boots achieves almost mystical significance--the ecstasy of their acquisition contrasting with the strength achieved through their sacrifice. "Fresh bread and jam...barley and mutton soup," served to Ned in jail, provide poignant contrast to the poorer, leaner fare on the farm. And a red silk dress becomes a symbol for corruption in one context and love in another. A vigorous and uncompromising vision of wilderness life and death, the novel is also the sensitive portrayal of a young man forced to make impossible decisions to save and protect his family. It is also a passionate love story told with a warmth and sympathy that is all the more poignant for its contrast with the murder and death which accompany it. Satisfying and rewarding on all levels. Mary Whipple
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Marginalization of Ned Kelly and His Growing Legions,
By
This review is from: True History of the Kelly Gang (Paperback)
The story line of The True History of the Kelly Gang is a fictionalized account of the Australian bushranger; but that's not what this story is about. Briefly, this is the account, from the perspective of the historian Ned Kelly, of how people are ground down into poverty and marginalized. It's a brutal reality that Ned Kelly presents.The story line is easy to recount: Ned Kelly, who wanted nothing more than to farm the land, is badgered, bullied, and persecuted by Australian authorities - most especially squatter land owners, local police and magistrates, and solid middle class citizens of small towns. It isn't the remote English who persecute Ned Kelly, his family, and others being pushed to society's periphery, it's those who live closest to the marginalized who grind them under and push them over the edge. Ned Kelly's story is not limited to Australia any more than William Faulkner is a southern writer. Peter Carey's epigram is Faulkner's mantra: "The past is not dead. It's not even past." Just as Faulkner relied on a small corner of the earth (Yoknapatawpha county) to write about universal themes, so Kelly has written about events shaping our world. Kelly and his family initially attempt to scratch out a living farming land that yields few crops. Trouble begins when the young Kelly kills a neighbor's calf that has wandered near the family's stake. Police don't nab Ned. They lock up the father, who is already worn down and returns from the lockup a completely broken man. It's a cycle that passes across generational lines. The past is not dead. It's not even past. Ned steadfastly sticks to his aim of making the family's poor farm prosper. But the deck is stacked against him. The men at the farm are driven by lust for Ned's mother. The string of babies is endless, and the means of supporting the fractured family is nearly nil. At times, the mother's income is reduced to what she can earn selling illegal shots of brandy to passersby. At one point, she even leases Ned out to the famous bushranger Harry Power, where he learns what a pathetic and laughable existence this Robin Hood of the bush lives. Among the marginalized, each action has a negative, sometimes unintended, affect on those around them, especially those they love. Ned's mother's decision to lease him to Powers makes Ned a serious outlaw in the face of the authorities, not because he is (Powers' exploits and the life he leads are more comical than threatening), but because authorities say he is a criminal. In one instance, Ned is branded a horse thief because one of his mother's many suitors leaves him holding a stolen horse. Eventually, and it takes a lot, Ned is pushed into becoming what authorities have said he is all along: a horse thief. From this point, the unraveling of Kelly and his "gang," again only because authorities, the press, and the public have created their own myth of the Kelly Gang, is quick and certain. Ned Kelly, like his father and other characters in this history is ground under completely, forfeiting his life and the attachments to those he loved. That Carey makes this a history written by Ned Kelly is all the more compelling. Kelly as author rises above the outlaw, the farmer, the eldest son of an impoverished Irish family in an English colony. Here Kelley is elevated to creator of a story, the type of story that TS Eliot said is used to define ourselves. In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Faulkner said: "the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat. He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid: and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed--love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice." If Carey was the narrator of this story, he could not meet this standard. Carey is a well-established and comfortable writer of fiction living in New York. But by making Kelly the author of the narrative, Ned Kelly achieves the high standard Faulkner set, allowing him to write of the universal truths that define us. If you doubt the truth of Ned Kelly's story, consider that 40% of the world lives on less than $2/day. That's less than $800/year. Unrest in the world, the Middle East, China, and Europe, is from the marginalized. Poverty in the US is at an all time high. And, all over the world, the gap between the haves and the have nots widens, exponentially. It has only been 10 years, or so, since Ned Kelly's history was first published. So, it's too early to remark on whether it has withstood the test of time. But, one thing is certain, Ned Kelly's history is truer today than it ever was.
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