Customer Reviews

True History of the Kelly Gang

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After studying in Melbourne, Australia for about 4 years, I had fallen across texts and historical accounts on the famous Australian bushranger Ned Kelly. Most of the time, they were quite bland and very vague - what they stressed most was that Ned Kelly was someone who was a mystery, a folk tale.

Another book that has dealt with trying to get into the real character of Ned Kelly was Our Sunshine. I feel that "True History of the Kelly Gang" gives us a more in depth feel into one view of what the true Ned Kelly was like. The characters in the book comes alive and at times, you forget that this was not written by Carey but by Ned himself (which is what Carey wants the reader to do). The grammatical errors and the lack of punctuation did become confusing at times but, trust me, you get used to it and it also makes the story come alive and makes it very, very believable. It is almost like the new phase of Reality TV but better.

The book deals with all the events that Ned Kelly went through and Carey weaves all these events with Kelly's personal life and an example of what he might have felt during different stages of his life. The layout of the "project" is given to the reader in a package form from his younger days to his early death. It is extremely detailed and it is obvious that a lot of painstaking research was poured into the book and it is evident that Carey actually became the Ned that he was painting in his mind.

This is a book that has everything - murder, love, family, loyalty, betrayal, action and most of all, it is able to draw the reader into the situation to feel what all the characters are feeling. It forces the reader to think about whether Kelly was in the right or in the wrong and it creates debate between knowledge that we all might have past before about this character.

It is hard for someone who had never heard of the Kelly story before to really get into this book and to truly appreciate it, some history has to be studied. This is what makes the book fascinating as it is remarkable to see how Carey has weaved the events to make it feel like a flowing river of events. Basically, these parcels/manuscripts that have been written are from Ned Kelly himself to his daughter so as to give evidence that he is not the man the newspapers portray him as. It is a touching and very emotional account of a man that has been wronged for most of his life. But we also have to pause and think whether what all he is saying is true or what he wants to be true.

As a teenager, I recommend it to all age groups (I mean, if it passes for teenagers, it should be able to pass for everyone) as it can be read on many levels - as a story or as a trip into real history.

This book serves its purpose of bringing Ned Kelly to life and I salute and thank Peter Carey for doing that for me.

This is one of the few great "factional" works of literature. Most attempts in making novels of real life people tend to fail. Exceptions are Mailer's The Executioner's Song and Capote's In Cold Blood. Along with Kelly the central characters of these stories met their fate in the same way - executed by the state. And now in Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang we learn of Ned's inevitable march to the gallows. Through these tales we may understand what motivates society's criminals. In bringing Ned back to life Peter Carey has done this brilliantly.

In the True History Carey has looked anew at a timeless story. One which is just as relevant today. How much is one's environment responsible for the illegal actions of an otherwise decent man. Yet, despite all his disadvantages, Ned Kelly emerges as a man of much depth, compassion and intelligence. Ned cared much for his fellow Irish-Australians and the other dispossessed choking under the English yoke in the colony of Victoria in the nineteenth century.

What'smore I loved how Carey has truly captured Ned's voice. A voice that shows a lack of education but a great depth of insight and understanding of his times. And what exciting times they were.

A great book by a writer who has now reached the height of his powers. If one wants to understand what, hopefully, lies at the heart of the Australian character then this is, as Ned's mother would say, the effing book.

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.

There is the short version and the long version.

The short version goes like this: if you are interested in Ned Kelly OR enjoyed either Roddy Doyle's "A Star Called Henry" or Russell Bank's "Cloudsplitter" (without knowing all that much about Irish or American history, respectively), you will like Peter Carey's "True History of the Kelly Gang".

The long version begins by taking both Roddy Doyle and Russell Banks to task, somewhat, suggesting that each of those novels uses history as a crutch: "A Star Called Henry" relies on a working knowledge of Irish history (particularly, "the troubles"); "Cloudsplitter" demands a similar expertise in regard to the American Civil War (and, furthermore, it helps - when reading "Cloudsplitter" - to have a definite opinion on John Brown).

All of which goes double for Peter Carey's book. This is a memoir (of sort) narrated by Ned Kelly, Australian outlaw cum folk hero. In lots of ways, an Australian John Brown. He tells you about his family (his wayward father, his struggling mother, his brothers and sisters). He tells you about his upbringing against a context of colonial misrule. He explains how the events that came about, came about, and tries to justify the actions against the historical perception. All very interesting up to a point.

BUT (and this is a collossal, fifty-foot high but): I couldn't help but be reminded of something a friend said to me recently. "Some books," my friend said, "you are INSIDE - it isn't like you're reading, it is like you're there. Some books, you enjoy less. You can APPRECIATE them, without quite being inside them. In other words, you can see why people like them, without quite getting worked up yourself. After that, what you're left with is books you just downright don't enjoy, for whatever reason - those are books that sit in your neighbour's garden, on the other side of the fence from you."

"True History of the Kelly Gang" starts out as a book you appreciate. Peter Carey is a writer's writer. You have a sly old chuckle at the great skill involved in constructing sentences that trail on and on, suggesting that (a) Ned Kelly is not a schooled man (b) Ned Kelly is not an ignorant man. This is what the construction of sentences alone suggests. There is an immediate duality at play. All credit to the author for that. It is all very clever.

However, over the course of the novel, it is that self-same erudition and skill that stops you, the reader, getting inside. This is not a book to enjoy. This is a book to occasionally marvel at. As with any marvel you are expected to stop and stare and coo and say aah at for any length of time, however, you eventually get tired. Your jaw aches from all that smiling. You start to get a bit tired of marvels. The books stops being a book you appreciate (roundabout the time Ned starts outlawing for real, when the book seems to become an endless round of police chasing outlaws, outlaws chasing police) and starts to be a book that annoys.

You sit there (scowling, in my case) as the book climbs up the fence and into your neighbour's garden. You keep checking how many pages you still have to read as the book lounges there on a towel, looking for all the world like the Cheshire Cat after a meal of cream. This is a book that reads like it is very pleased with itself, thankyou very much.

Which kind of puts me off somewhat.

Like many 19th century American outlaws have in this country, Ned Kelly has attained folkhero status in his native Australia. The impoverished, undereducated son of Irish immigrants, he ended his days at the end of a rope, a convicted thief and murderer. But many regard him as the persecuted victim of powerful English landlords and their agents, the police.

Carey (winner of the Booker Prize for "Oscar & Lucinda") gives Kelly a powerful voice in this stirring, eloquent novel. Presented as a series of parcels handscrawled on assorted stained and tattered paper, including stolen bank stationary, Kelly puts his story on paper for his baby daughter and promises, it "will contain no single lie may I burn in hell if I speak false."

Kelly's ungrammatical, heartfelt narrative contains not a single comma either but don't be alarmed. The writing is straightforward, conversational and impassioned. The wild Australian landscape comes alive. Events tumble after one another. Punctuation would only blunt the force of Kelly's voice.

At pains to justify his life and considerate of his reader, Kelly cleans up expletive-studded dialogue without changing a word. Besides the usual dashes between first and last letters (b-----d, b----r), Carey's charming and original solution is the word "adjectival." "His hair were wild his face smudged with charcoal it were adjectival this and adjectival that." The effect is endearing.

The eldest of a large brood, Kelly begins with his childhood and moves forward chronologically to reveal the events that led to his fugitive state and drove him to outlawry on a grand scale. The man that emerges is ambitious and protective of his family, if a trifle hotheaded. A would-be farmer, frustrated by poverty and the active contempt of those in power- the English - for those at the bottom - the Irish, crime is all but forced upon him and being framed to fit is his lot in life.

His first crime, at age 10, was the killing of a landowner's pampered cow to feed the desperate Kelly family. His father, who did terrible time for something in Ireland, is at pains to avoid the police, but, though Ned confesses, his father is hauled off to jail and it breaks him. At 12, Ned is the man of the family, his father dead.

Ned's mother, Ellen, eager to take advantage of new homesteading laws, packs up the family. But the land is poor and while Ned struggles to transform it into a farm, Ellen runs an illegal still and welcomes a lively succession of beaus.

One of Ellen's men is bushranger (Australian for bandit) Harry Power who, with Ellen's connivance, takes on young Ned as an apprentice. Ned's unprofitable adventures in the bush, holding up coaches and landlords and running from hideout to hideout, instill no love of the outlaw life. Its discomforts and humiliations only reinforce his bent for farming.

But, what with poor land, insufficient funds and the incessant hounding of the police, it's not to be. The Kelly family lurches from crisis to crisis, their existence precarious. Ned falls in love but even this joy is cut short when his mother is unjustly jailed and Ned and his brother take to the bush. Here Ned comes into his own, newly mindful of Harry Power's wisdom. The law may never deliver justice, but his own people can be swayed by his exploits or, failing that, bought.

It's only now we realize Ned's need to be understood extends beyond his baby daughter. He writes lengthy letters, even attempts to highjack a printer to publish a 58-page plea, but is never allowed a public voice. So, seeing the end come hurtling toward him, he writes for posterity.

Carey's Ned Kelly is a complicated, earnest man. Is he a hero? He certainly arouses the reader's sympathy and outrage. He makes us laugh and root for escape, although we already know it's hopeless. He makes poor choices, acts impulsively, suffers from pride. In Carey's hands, at least, he is the sort of man myths are made from.

Carey's bush, like our Wild West, is full of swaggering villains, cowards, blowhards and hotheads. Of Kelly's associates and family, the most vivid are the women. Ned may not understand them, but Carey does. Though Ellen Kelly comes across as a practical, fun-loving, broken-hearted and strong-willed woman, Ned can't see beyond her role as Mother. He is similarly near-sighted with his sisters and lover, while Carey's skills reveal them.

Carey has done a masterful job of portraying a hardscrabble time and place through the eyes of one singular man. With virtuoso writing, real characters and a landscape so rough you can taste the dust, Carey may have defined the Kelly legend.

If one were to combine the narrative vernacular genius of Twain and combine it with the offbeat storytelling qualities of Cormac McCarthy, one might well come up with a synthesis approximating Peter Carey. In this prize winning installment from one of Australia's premier writers, Carey presents a tale that is every bit as authentic and poignant as director Arthur Penn's American cinema classic, "Bonnie and Clyde." Indeed there are many parallels between the duo that Penn portrays and the Kelly gang. Both are anti-authoritarian, populist heroes who take on a corrupt, unfair establishment and react in a series of acts that escalate in degree of violence. Both the Kelly and the Barrow gang are portrayed as basically good, who are driven to acts of increasing hostility not so much by their inner nature as by societal injustice. The Barrows are harbingers of the depression, the Kelly gang are the malignant outcrop of a British caste system that has transplanted itself to a new country.

What saves Carey's novel from being some kind of diatribe against the intolerant injustices of the British settlers is the balanced portrait he provides of the core of the Kelly gang itself. These are not significantly admirable characters. Kelly's mother, in particular, though by every degree a strong, earthy woman, is also given to compromise and is prone to shift allegiances as contingencies dictate. Kelly himself, though exhibiting numerous noble qualities, is as apt to take on a degenerate, ruthless partner as he is prone to show a benign love of a younger sister. In other words, there are ambiguities at play here. Some readers are prone to react negatively to moral ambiguity. They want their characters black and white, their plots cut and dry. Neither Twain, McCarthy or Carey will satisfy such expectations, so readers looking for those qualities should avoid said authors.

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.

This book really blew me away. It is hard for me to believe that there are people out there who wouldn't like this thing. In a way, I can't really even think of it as fiction.

I found myself thinking again and again, I bet this really IS the true history of the Kelly gang..., and I got the sense that Peter Carey himself is absolutely convinced it is. In a way, I guess I am convinced of it myself.

What I found most moving about this modern classic is how Carey explores what it means to be a boy and a man through Ned Kelly. The discussion of Kelly's feelings for his mother - that desire to protect her, while sensing that she doesn't really ultimately want his protection, and that she doesn't entirely reciprocate those feelings of protection - is really touching, bittersweet as it is.

The discussion of Kelly's first true love, as well as how his sense of justice, and his longing to be a hero, motivated him, all made for a really touching and compelling read. I ended up feeling really enriched by this, kind of like when I read Anna Karenina. It seems a lot more than mere entertainment.

I keep trying to get people to read this, so I hope this review spurs someone to do so.

This is one of the best pieces of Australian historical fiction that I have ever read. The colloquial idiom used by the narrator, Ned Kelly is not, at any stage, confusing, or annoying; it is what makes the book come alive. Peter Carey has done well to capture the elusive voice of Australia's most notorious bushranger, and presents a gripping and passionate novel as a result. Certainly a worthwile read.

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.