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True History of the Kelly Gang: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Peter Carey
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
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Rating:  102 reviews
Sales Rank: 38058
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 0375724672
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780375724671
ASIN: 0375724672
Publication Date: December 4, 2001
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Amazon.com Review
"What is it about we Australians, eh?" demands a schoolteacher near the end of Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang. "Do we not have a Jefferson? A Disraeli? Might not we find someone better to admire than a horse-thief and a murderer?" It's the author's sole nod to the contradictory feelings Ned Kelly continues to evoke today, more than a century after his death. A psychopathic killer to some, a crusading folk hero to others, Kelly was a sharpshooting outlaw who eluded a brutal police manhunt for nearly two years. For better or worse, he's now a part of the Australian national myth. Indeed, the opening ceremonies for the Sydney Olympics featured an army of Ned Kellys dancing about to Irish music, which puts him in the symbolic company of both kangaroos and Olivia Newton-John. What's to be gained from telling this illiterate bushranger's story yet again? Quite a lot, as it turns out. For starters, there is the remarkable vernacular poetry of Carey's narrative voice. Fierce, funny, ungrammatical, steeped in Irish legends and the frontier's moral code, this voice is the novel's great achievement--and perhaps the greatest in Carey's distinguished career. It paints a vivid picture of an Australia where English landowners skim off the country's best territory while government land grants allow the settlers just enough acreage to starve. Cheated, lied to, and persecuted by the authorities at every opportunity, young Kelly retains no faith in his colonial masters. What he does trust, oddly, is the power of words: And here is the thing about them men they was Australians they knew full well the terror of the unyielding law the historic memory of UNFAIRNESS were in their blood and a man might be a bank clerk or an overseer he might never have been lagged for nothing but still he knew in his heart what it were to be forced to wear the white hood in prison he knew what it were to be lashed for looking a warder in the eye ... so the knowledge of unfairness were deep in his bone and in his marrow. Ned Kelly as literary hero? Strangely enough, that's what he becomes, at least in Carey's rendering. Pouring his heart out in a series of letters to the country at large, Kelly wants nothing more than to be heard--and for the dirt-poor son of an Irish convict, that's an audacious ambition indeed. It's not so surprising, then, that his story continues to speak to Australians. Like all colonial countries, Australia was built at a steep human price, and the memory of all those silenced voices lives on. True History of the Kelly Gang takes its epigraph from Faulkner: "The past is not dead. It is not even past." And like Faulkner's own vast chronicle of dispossession, it's haunted by tragedies as large as history itself. --Mary Park
Product Description
“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.”
In True History of the Kelly Gang, the legendary Ned Kelly speaks for himself, scribbling his narrative on errant scraps of paper in semiliterate but magically descriptive prose as he flees from the police. To his pursuers, Kelly is nothing but a monstrous criminal, a thief and a murderer. To his own people, the lowly class of ordinary Australians, the bushranger is a hero, defying the authority of the English to direct their lives. Indentured by his bootlegger mother to a famous horse thief (who was also her lover), Ned saw his first prison cell at 15 and by the age of 26 had become the most wanted man in the wild colony of Victoria, taking over whole towns and defying the law until he was finally captured and hanged. Here is a classic outlaw tale, made alive by the skill of a great novelist.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 97 more reviews...
Tale of an Irish-Australian Outlaw October 5, 2008
This book tells the story of infamous Australian outlaw Ned Kelly (sort of the Australian Jesse James, for comparison's sake).
The writing style could be considered a tad challenging due to the regional slang that's incorporated, but the subject matter really makes up for it. Ned's life story, as imagined by Peter Carey, is very compelling. He comes across as a mostly decent, good-hearted human being who ends up as an outlaw due to the extreme anti-Irish sentiment in Australia at the time and lack of other opportunity afforded to him as a result.
I actually found the political undercurrent of the novel the most intriguing part of the story and wished that it had been expanded upon a bit more. This is a very interesting and educational story that I really enjoyed.
 Heartbreaking struggles March 16, 2008
This one's a heartbreaker about poor Irish and their futile efforts to avoid being stepped on an ruined by the wealthy and powerful, leading to inevitable crimes of revenge and justice. Written in dialect that's not difficult as though it were actually Kelly writing. Highly recommended.
Masterful portrayal of the social conditions of the time October 17, 2007
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.
Brilliant narrative voice and atmosphere outweighs inevitable plot August 27, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I tried this book for no other reason than I liked the title and premise. For a story where every reader knows the inevitable outcome, it manages to be both absorbing and fresh, with a unique voice in the form of Ned Kelly's narration. There's just enough taken from history, and enough extrapolated from bits and pieces of known correspondence and journalism, to make it feel like you are reading a historically-accurate (though clearly subjective) document - which, while not quite true, comes a lot closer than most "fictionalized history" novels. It isn't thrilling, because nothing recounted in the form of letters is ever thrilling, but it exerts its own kind of hold that keeps you constantly wondering what choice Ned will make next, and either cheering for him or wanting him to hold back. That's the sign of great characterization, and will keep me on the lookout for more novels by this author.
Excellent Heroic Myth-Making April 26, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Americans and Australians share many personality traits: both countries are vast expanses of wilderness, explored and settled by stubborn, independent people who often defied the British leaders. Their people also have a weakness for turning villains into heroes. In America, citizens cheered the exploits of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Bonnie and Clyde. In Australia, the lower class hero was a man named Ned Kelly, the son of dirt-poor Irish immigrants who led a gang of outlaws who made fools of the authorities for almost two years. This unusual historical novel purports to be the autobiography of Ned Kelly, written in painstaking script on stolen paper, envelopes and foolscap by an almost illiterate hero. By turns, touching and profane, the story details Ned's inevitable journey into thievery and lawlessness because of his fierce love for his mother. Ellen Kelly was a fiery beauty whose marriage to a weak-willed Irishman forced to flee Ireland after betraying his friends set the stage for tragedy. Unable to support his growing clan, Ned's father deserts them. When Ellen spurns the attention of the local policeman, she inspires a vendetta that curses her family for a lifetime. Desperate to provide for Ned, she apprentices him to a powerful highwayman. Soon Ned is learning the ways of thieves and robbers. The book chronicles his adventures with Harry, his eventual rebellion against the cruel criminal and his futile attempts to return to a normal law-abiding life working the farm for his mother. Carey has written a brilliant novel that captures the spirit and heart of a man who inspired the devotion of his neighbors and friends. Ned is clever, courageous, stubborn, profane, but at the heart of his character is his fierce loyalty to his mother, to his wife and to the daughter that he will never see. Carey captures the pride and honor that makes Ned so sympathetic and inspiring to his countrymen.
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