From Library Journal
Australia's Jesse James, Irish immigrant Ned Kelly was an outlaw beloved by the little guy because he stood up to the British at the top. Booker Prize winner Carey embellishes his story in a work that blasts off with a 15-city author's tour and a 75,000-copy first printing.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Australian novelist Carey's imagination is tuned to the nineteenth century, the time frame for the Booker Prize-winning Oscar and Lucinda (1988), the Dickensian improvisation Jack Maggs (1998), and now this rough-and-tumble yet deeply humanistic and beautifully worked tale of a good-hearted man doomed to live a life he abhors. The historically based story of outlaw Ned Kelly and his contentious Irish clan reads like a western in spite of the fact that its frontier is Australia and its bad guys are servants of the queen of England. Carey, a superb yarn spinner with a lot to say about the perversity of human nature, has Ned write his life story for the daughter he will never meet. Ned's voice is pure country and his punctuation minimal, but his decorum is great (he replaces every profanity with the word "adjectival") and his compassion stupendous. Twelve when his father dies, he tries to be the man of the house for his large and destitute family, dreaming of homesteading and horse-breeding, but his tough and pragmatic mother has her own ideas, and Ned is forced into a life of crime as the unwilling apprentice of Harry Power, an infamous highwayman. This is the first of many shocking betrayals, but stalwart Ned remains loyal to his people, acutely aware of the fact that because the Irish were "considered a notch beneath cattle," there was no justice in their lives. The land is vast and wild, but there is no place to hide; Ned endures one absurd and horrific showdown after another, and yet love flourishes. And heroes are not forgotten. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang purports to transcribe documents, 'thirteen parcels of stained and dog-eared papers,' in which the celebrated outlaw, on the run, set down for the benefit of his daughter (whom he was destined never to see) a heartfelt account and justification of his short and violent life. The ingenuity, empathy, and poetic ear that the novelist brings to his feat of imposture cannot be rated too high; hardly a colloquialism feels turned wrong, hardly a homely phrase feels rote, patronizing, or quaint . . . The poetry that Carey can coax from this lightly educated ruffian's lightly punctuated prose gratifies us on every page [and] rises to the occasion like the Song of Songs." —John Updike, The New Yorker
"This avalanche of a novel [raises] a national legend to the level of an international myth."
—Ron Charles, The Christian Science Monitor
"A spectacular feat of literary ventriloquism [with] all the makings of a swaggering adventure tale as well as a classic Western tragedy. The effect is triumphantly eclectic, as if Huck Finn and Shakespeare had joined forces to prettify the legend of Jesse James . . . But this rip-snorting Western novel rises far above such considerations and works on its own great merits as a seamlessly imagined coming-of-age story set in wild country and wilder times. Though Ned Kelly died in 1880 just before his 26th birthday, he could not be more furiously alive." —Janet Maslin, The New York Times
"The best measure of the novel's excellence [is] that you never doubt it's Kelly's own words you're reading in the headlong, action-packed story filled with stage-coach holdups, bank robberies and backstabbing treachery."
—Malcolm Jones, Newsweek
"Ambitious and adventurous . . . from lyrical to rowdy and ribald . . . Peter Carey's Ned Kelly is somebody worth knowing and remembering, and his novel is also worth our best attention." —George Garrett, The Washington Post Book World
"Highly original . . . To read it is to be carried away." —Sara Dowse, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune
"True History of the Kelly Gang is a true wonder. It's lyrical and hard-edged at the same time, constantly inventive, pell-mell in its storytelling, and best of all, the voice Peter Carey invents for Ned Kelly is nothing less than mint-fresh original. This is just amazing writing." —Kent Haruf
"A big, meaty novel, blending equal parts Dickens and Cormac McCarthy, and a complete success . . . Most immediately striking is how much it resembles an American Western about such legendary outlaws as Jesse James and Bonnie and Clyde." —Ken Foster, The San Francisco Chronicle
"To succeed as literature a book must entertain. This novel is no exception—a tough, sweet, rousing thing of ungrammatical sentences and unquestionable wisdom." —Erik Torkells, Fortune
"There is certainly justice in putting True History on the bookshelf next to Shane . . . It rocks and cajoles the reader into a certainty that Ned Kelly is fit company not only for Jack Palance and Clint Eastwood but for Thomas Jefferson." —Johnathan Levi, The Los Angeles Times
"The power and charm of True History [brings] Australia's legendary Ned Kelly vibrantly to life." —Paul Gray, Time
"I completely admire Peter Carey's work—the worlds he enters, the stakes he goes for—and Ned Kelly's a leap even beyond the others, brilliantly constructed, gorgeously written, a simply heartbreaking story." —Beverly Lowry
"Dazzling . . . narrated with great flair in prose heavy on expletives and light on punctuation—yet full of music and poetry." —The Economist
"Bolder and more challenging than anything [one of fiction's great treasure hunters] has attempted before . . . the book's power as a narrative is nearly overwhelming. The twang of Ned's untutored but vibrant prose would be hypnotic in itself, yet Carey adapts it to a series of set pieces . . . that are as gripping as any you could wish to read. He has transformed sepia legend into brilliant, even violent, color, and turned a distant myth into warm flesh and blood. Packed with incident, alive with comedy and pathos, True History of the Kelly Gang contains pretty much everything you could ask of a novel. It is an adjectival wonder. " —Anthony Quinn, New York Times Book Review
"Wholly convincing not only as an outback adventure but also as a psychological and historical drama. It is, above all, a spectacular feat of imagination grounded in an Australian landscape [that] is an astonishing, apparently limitless place with mysteries of its own to reveal . . . Carey has immersed us so completely in Kelly's world and swept us along at such a cracking pace that the novel's last scene is physically draining, bewildering. Like Ned we can hardly believe it is all over." —Anna Mundow, The Boston Sunday Globe
“True History of the Kelly Gang is a true wonder. It’s lyrical and hard-edged at the same time, constantly inventive, pell-mell in its storytelling, and, best of all, the voice Peter Carey invents for Ned Kelly is nothing less than mint-fresh original. This is just amazing writing.” —Kent Haruf
“As genuine as a diamond in the rough . . . In essence an adventure saga, with numerous descriptions of the wild and forbidding Australian landscape, shocking surprises, coldhearted villains who hail from the top and the bottom of the social ladder, and a tender love story. Carey (Booker Prize winner for Oscar and Lucinda) deserves to be lionized in his native land for this triumphant historical recreation, and he will undoubtedly win a worldwide readership for a novel that teems with energy, suspense, and the true story of a memorable protagonist . . . No reader will be left unmoved.” —Publishers Weekly
“I completely admire Peter Carey’s work—the worlds he enters, the stakes he goes for—and Ned Kelly’s a leap even beyond the others: brilliantly constructed, gorgeously written, a simply heartbreaking story.” —Beverly Lowry
From the Inside Flap
Out of nineteenth-century Australia rides a hero of his people and a man for all nations, in this masterpiece by the Booker Prize-winning author of Oscar and Lucinda and Jack Maggs. Exhilarating, hilarious, panoramic, and immediately engrossing, it is also?at a distance of many thousand miles and more than a century?a Great American Novel.
This is Ned Kelly's true confession, in his own words and written on the run for an infant daughter he has never seen. To the authorities, this son of dirt-poor Irish immigrants was a born thief and, ultimately, a cold-blooded murderer; to most other Australians, he was a scapegoat and patriot persecuted by "English" landlords and their agents.
With his brothers and two friends, Kelly eluded a massive police manhunt for twenty months, living by his wits and strong heart, supplementing his bushwhacking skills with ingenious bank robberies while enjoying the support of most everyone not in uniform. He declined to flee overseas when he could, bound to win his jailed mother's freedom by any means possible, including his own surrender. In the end, however, she served out her sentence in the same Melbourne prison where, in 1880, her son was hanged.
Still his country's most powerful legend, Ned Kelly is here chiefly a man in full: devoted son, loving husband, fretful father, and loyal friend, now speaking as if from the grave. With this mythic outlaw and the story of his mighty travails and exploits, and with all the force of a classic Western, Peter Carey has breathed life into a historical figure who transcends all borders and embodies tragedy, perseverance, and freedom.
From the Back Cover
"Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang purports to transcribe documents, 'thirteen parcels of stained and dog-eared papers,' in which the celebrated outlaw, on the run, set down for the benefit of his daughter (whom he was destined never to see) a heartfelt account and justification of his short and violent life. The ingenuity, empathy, and poetic ear that the novelist brings to his feat of imposture cannot be rated too high; hardly a colloquialism feels turned wrong, hardly a homely phrase feels rote, patronizing, or quaint . . . The poetry that Carey can coax from this lightly educated ruffian's lightly punctuated prose gratifies us on every page [and] rises to the occasion like the Song of Songs." —John Updike, The New Yorker
"This avalanche of a novel [raises] a national legend to the level of an international myth."
—Ron Charles, The Christian Science Monitor
"A spectacular feat of literary ventriloquism [with] all the makings of a swaggering adventure tale as well as a classic Western tragedy. The effect is triumphantly eclectic, as if Huck Finn and Shakespeare had joined forces to prettify the legend of Jesse James . . . But this rip-snorting Western novel rises far above such considerations and works on its own great merits as a seamlessly imagined coming-of-age story set in wild country and wilder times. Though Ned Kelly died in 1880 just before his 26th birthday, he could not be more furiously alive." —Janet Maslin, The New York Times
"The best measure of the novel's excellence [is] that you never doubt it's Kelly's own words you're reading in the headlong, action-packed story filled with stage-coach holdups, bank robberies and backstabbing treachery."
—Malcolm Jones, Newsweek
"Ambitious and adventurous . . . from lyrical to rowdy and ribald . . . Peter Carey's Ned Kelly is somebody worth knowing and remembering, and his novel is also worth our best attention." —George Garrett, The Washington Post Book World
"Highly original . . . To read it is to be carried away." —Sara Dowse, The Minneapolis Star-Tribune
"True History of the Kelly Gang is a true wonder. It's lyrical and hard-edged at the same time, constantly inventive, pell-mell in its storytelling, and best of all, the voice Peter Carey invents for Ned Kelly is nothing less than mint-fresh original. This is just amazing writing." —Kent Haruf
"A big, meaty novel, blending equal parts Dickens and Cormac McCarthy, and a complete success . . . Most immediately striking is how much it resembles an American Western about such legendary outlaws as Jesse James and Bonnie and Clyde." —Ken Foster, The San Francisco Chronicle
"To succeed as literature a book must entertain. This novel is no exception—a tough, sweet, rousing thing of ungrammatical sentences and unquestionable wisdom." —Erik Torkells, Fortune
"There is certainly justice in putting True History on the bookshelf next to Shane . . . It rocks and cajoles the reader into a certainty that Ned Kelly is fit company not only for Jack Palance and Clint Eastwood but for Thomas Jefferson." —Johnathan Levi, The Los Angeles Times
"The power and charm of True History [brings] Australia's legendary Ned Kelly vibrantly to life." —Paul Gray, Time
"I completely admire Peter Carey's work—the worlds he enters, the stakes he goes for—and Ned Kelly's a leap even beyond the others, brilliantly constructed, gorgeously written, a simply heartbreaking story." —Beverly Lowry
"Dazzling . . . narrated with great flair in prose heavy on expletives and light on punctuation—yet full of music and poetry." —The Economist
"Bolder and more challenging than anything [one of fiction's great treasure hunters] has attempted before . . . the book's power as a narrative is nearly overwhelming. The twang of Ned's untutored but vibrant prose would be hypnotic in itself, yet Carey adapts it to a series of set pieces . . . that are as gripping as any you could wish to read. He has transformed sepia legend into brilliant, even violent, color, and turned a distant myth into warm flesh and blood. Packed with incident, alive with comedy and pathos, True History of the Kelly Gang contains pretty much everything you could ask of a novel. It is an adjectival wonder. " —Anthony Quinn, New York Times Book Review
"Wholly convincing not only as an outback adventure but also as a psychological and historical drama. It is, above all, a spectacular feat of imagination grounded in an Australian landscape [that] is an astonishing, apparently limitless place with mysteries of its own to reveal . . . Carey has immersed us so completely in Kelly's world and swept us along at such a cracking pace that the novel's last scene is physically draining, bewildering. Like Ned we can hardly believe it is all over." —Anna Mundow, The Boston Sunday Globe
“True History of the Kelly Gang is a true wonder. It’s lyrical and hard-edged at the same time, constantly inventive, pell-mell in its storytelling, and, best of all, the voice Peter Carey invents for Ned Kelly is nothing less than mint-fresh original. This is just amazing writing.” —Kent Haruf
“As genuine as a diamond in the rough . . . In essence an adventure saga, with numerous descriptions of the wild and forbidding Australian landscape, shocking surprises, coldhearted villains who hail from the top and the bottom of the social ladder, and a tender love story. Carey (Booker Prize winner for Oscar and Lucinda) deserves to be lionized in his native land for this triumphant historical recreation, and he will undoubtedly win a worldwide readership for a novel that teems with energy, suspense, and the true story of a memorable protagonist . . . No reader will be left unmoved.” —Publishers Weekly
“I completely admire Peter Carey’s work—the worlds he enters, the stakes he goes for—and Ned Kelly’s a leap even beyond the others: brilliantly constructed, gorgeously written, a simply heartbreaking story.” —Beverly Lowry
About the Author
Born in Australia in 1943, Peter Carey lives in New York City with his wife, Alison Summers, and their two sons. The author of six previous novels and a collection of stories, he won the Booker Prize for Oscar and Lucinda; his other honors include the Commonwealth Prize and the Miles Franklin Award.
Peter Carey's Jack Maggs, Oscar and Lucinda, The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith, Bliss, Illywhacker, The Fat Man in History, and The Tax Inspector are available in Vintage paperback.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
TITLE: TRUE HISTORY OF THE KELLY GANG
Parcel 1
His Life until the Age of 12
National Bank letterhead. Almost certainly taken from the Euroa Branch of the National Bank in December 1878. There are 45 sheets of medium stock (8" 3 10" approx.) with stabholes near the top where at one time they were crudely bound. Heavily soiled.
Contains accounts of his early relations with police including an accusation of transvestism. Some recollections of the Quinn family and the move to the township of Avenel. A claim that his father was wrongly arrested for the theft of Murray’s heifer. A story explaining the origins of the sash presently held by the Benalla Historical Society. Death of John Kelly.
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.
God willing I shall live to see you read these words to witness your astonishment and see your dark eyes widen and your jaw drop when you finally comprehend the injustice we poor Irish suffered in this present age. How queer and foreign it must seem to you and all the coarse words and cruelty which I now relate are far away in ancient time.
Your grandfather were a quiet and secret man he had been ripped from his home in Tipperary and transported to the prisons of Van Diemen’s Land I do not know what was done to him he never spoke of it. When they had finished with their tortures they set him free and he crossed the sea to the colony of Victoria. He were by this time 30 yr. of age red headed and freckled with his eyes always slitted against the sun. My da had sworn an oath to evermore avoid the attentions of the law so when he saw the streets of Melbourne was crawling with policemen worse than flies he walked 28 mi. to the township of Donnybrook and then or soon thereafter he seen my mother. Ellen Quinn were 18 yr. old she were dark haired and slender the prettiest figure on a horse he ever saw but your grandma was like a snare laid out by God for Red Kelly. She were a Quinn and the police would never leave the Quinns alone.
My 1st memory is of Mother breaking eggs into a bowl and crying that Jimmy Quinn my 15 yr. old uncle were arrested by the traps. I don’t know where my daddy were that day nor my older sister Annie. I were 3 yr. old. While my mother cried I scraped the sweet yellow batter onto a spoon and ate it the roof were leaking above the camp oven each drop hissing as it hit.
My mother tipped the cake onto the muslin cloth and knotted it. Your Aunt Maggie were a baby so my mother wrapped her also then she carried both cake and baby out into the rain. I had no choice but follow up the hill how could I forget them puddles the colour of mustard the rain like needles in my eyes.
We arrived at the Beveridge Police Camp drenched to the bone and doubtless stank of poverty a strong odour about us like wet dogs and for this or other reasons we was excluded from the Sergeant's room. I remember sitting with my chilblained hands wedged beneath the door I could feel the lovely warmth of the fire on my fingertips. Yet when we was finally permitted
entry all my attention were taken not by the blazing fire but by a huge red jowled creature the Englishman who sat behind the desk. I knew not his name only that he were the most powerful man I ever saw and he might destroy my mother if he so desired.
Approach says he as if he was an altar.
My mother approached and I hurried beside her. She told the Englishman she had baked a cake for his prisoner Quinn and would be most obliged to deliver it because her husband were absent and she had butter to churn and pigs to feed.
No cake shall go to the prisoner said the trap I could smell his foreign spicy smell he had a handlebar moustache and his scalp were shining through his hair.
Said he No cake shall go to the prisoner without me inspecting it 1st and he waved his big soft white hand thus indicating my mother should place her basket on his desk. He untied the muslin his fingernails so clean they looked like they was washed in lye and to this day I can see them livid instruments as they broke my mother’s cake apart.
Tis not poverty I hate the mostnor the eternal grovellingbut the insults which grow on itwhich not even leeches can cure
I will lay a quid that you have already been told the story of how your grandma won her case in court against Bill Frost and then led wild gallops up and down the main street of Benalla. You will know she were never a coward but on this occasion she understood she must hold her tongue and so she wrapped the warm crumbs in the cloth and walked out into the rain. I
cried out to her but she did not hear so I followed her skirts across the muddy yard. At 1st I thought it an outhouse on whose door I found her hammering it come as a shock to realise my young uncle were locked inside. For the great offence of duffing a bullock with cancer of the eye he were interred in this earth floored slab hut which could not have measured more than 6 ft. 3 6 ft. and here my mother were forced to kneel in the mud and push the broken cake under the door the gap v. narrow perhaps 2 in. not sufficient for the purpose.
She cried God help us Jimmy what did we ever do to them that they should torture us like this?
My mother never wept but weep she did and I rushed and clung to her and kissed her but still she could not feel that I were there. Tears poured down her handsome face as she forced the muddy mess of cake and muslin underneath the door.
She cried I would kill the b-----ds if I were a man God help me. She used many rough expressions I will not write them here. It were eff this and ess that and she would blow their adjectival brains out.
These was frightening sentiments for a boy to hear his mamma speak but I did not know how set she were until 2 nights later when my father returned home and she said the exact same things again to him.
You don’t know what you’re talking about said he.
You are a coward she cried. I blocked my ears and buried my face into my floursack pillow but she would not give up and neither would my father turn against the law. I wish I had known my parents when they truly loved each other.
You will see in time your grandfather were a man of secrets and what he said and done was different things though for now it is enough to know my mother had one idea about my father and the police the opposite. She thought him Michael Meek. They knew him as a graduate of Van Diemen's Land and a criminal by birth and trade and marriage they was constantly
examining the brands on our stock or sifting through our flour for signs of larceny but they never found nothing except mouse manure they must have had a mighty craving for the taste.
Nor was your grandmother as unfriendly towards the police as you would expect if solely instructed by her testimony she might of wished to murder them but would not mind a little drink and joke before she done the deed. There was one Sergeant his name O'Neil my mother seemed to like him better than the rest. I am talking now of a later time I must have been 9 yr. of age for our sister Kate had just been born. Our father were away contracting and our small hut were more crowded than ever now there was 6 children all sleeping between the maze of patchwork curtains Mother hung to make up for the lack of walls. It were like living in a cupboard full of dresses.
Into this shadowy world Sgt O'Neil did come with queer white hair which he were always combing like a girl before a dance he were v. friendly to us children and on the night in question he brung me the gift of a pencil. At school we used the slates but I never touched a pencil and was most excited to smell the sweet pine and graphite as the Sergeant sharpened his gift he were very fatherly towards me and set me at one end of the table with a sheet of paper. My sister Annie were 1 yr. older she got nothing from O'Neil but thats another story.
I set to work to cover my paper with the letters of the alphabet. My mother sat at the other end of the table with the Sgt and when he produced his silver flask I paid no more attention than I did to Annie & Jem & Maggie & Dan. After I made each letter as a capital I set to do the smaller ones such were my concentration that when my mother spoke her voice seemed very far away.
Get out of my house.
I looked up to discover Sergeant O'Neil with his hand to his cheek I suppose she must of slapped him for his countenance were turned v. red.
Get out my mother shrieked she had the Irish temper we was accustomed to it.
Ellen you calm yourself you know I never meant nothing in the least improper.
Eff off my mother cried.
The policeman’s voice took a sterner character. Ellen said he you must not use such language to a police officer.
That were a red rag to my mother she uncoiled herself from her seat. You effing mongrel she cried her voice louder again. You wouldnt say that if my husband were not gone contracting.
I will issue one more warning Mrs Kelly.
At this my mother snatched up the Sergeant’s teacup and threw the contents onto the earthen floor. Arrest me she cried arrest me you coward.
Baby Kate woke crying then. Jem were 4 yr. old sitting on the floor playing knuckles but when the brandy splashed beside him he let the bones lie quiet. Of a different disposition I begun to move towards my mother.
Did you hear your mother call me a coward old chap?
I would not betray her I walked round the table and stood next to her. Said he You was busy writing Ned?
I took my mother’s hand and she put her arm around my shoulder.
You are a scholar aint it he asked me.
I said I were.
Then you must know about the history of cowards. I were confused I shook my head.
Next O'N...
