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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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Synopsis
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.

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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

Masterful portrayal of the social conditions of the time, 16 Sep 2007

By	Gordon Eldridge (Southport, Australia) - See all my reviews

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.

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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

Peter Carey's novel attempts to find Ned Kelly's voice, 2 Aug 2004

By	Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota) - See all my reviews

I suspect for many Americans their first introduction to the legend of Ned Kelly was when the Australian icon of his helmet was incorporated into the opening ceremonies of the 2000 Sydney Olympics. Of course there are those who knew of Kelly from Tony Richardson's 1970 film "Ned Kelly," where Mick Jagger played the title role, or even the 1993 film "Reckless Kelly" with Yahoo, which updated the Kelly legend, for lack of a better word, to the present. That idea that Kelly is the Robin Hood of Australia is enough of a touchstone for most to understand Kelly's importance to the Australian psyche, but there are those who consider him to be nothing more than a glorified outlaw, more like Jesse James than Robin Hood. Significantly, those views break down all ethnic lines, with Irish-Australians seeing the hero and Anglo-Australians insisting on the villain. Gregor Jordan's 2003 film "Ned Kelly," based on Robert Drewe's "Our Sunshine" and starring well known Australian actors Heath Ledger, Geoffrey Rush and Naomi Watts will renew interest in the true story and may well lead viewers to this volume.

Peter Carey's "True History of the Kelly Gang" is, despite the title a fictional novel which won the Booker Prize in 2001. The novel is inspired in part by Sidney Nolan's famous series of paintings of Ned Kelly and is told in a first person narrative style that is based on Kelly's own "Jerilderie Letter," which provided his version of the events that led to him being an outlaw with a 8,000 pound reward on his head, the largest in the world up to that time. The conceit is that Kelly has written these words, intended them to be read by a daughter who was born and raised in California, trying to explain his life.

Carey's book is not a substitute for the true history it purports to be, including people and events that are not part of the historical record (to wit, Mary and the baby), as he attempts to connect the dots of Ned Kelly's life. Ultimately this is a character study wherein Carey emphasizes Kelly's strong Irish-Australian identity, his fierce loyalty to family and friends, and his native wit and inherent shrewdness. We know from the letters he dictated and the transcript of his trial that Kelly was intelligent and Carey plays that up throughout the book, because essentially what is happening here is that he is justifying the icon image of Kelly that exists in the popular mind of Australia. At the same time there is humanizing, for Kelly has a strong attachment to his mother and forges a new relationship with his brother Dan as the Kelly Gang heads towards its fate. He also hates the English as much as they hate them, which is no mean feat. In the end what you get out of this book is not Ned Kelly's story but rather his voice, although its authenticity is, of course, open to debate.

Ultimately "True History of the Kelly Gang" is not meant as an introduction to the story of Ned Kelly. Jordan's film is out on DVD now so it can serve that function as others as it did for me. Carey will give us more of a notion of what Kelly might have been thinking and certainly a more complete picture of the world in which Kelly lived and died. The climax of this book is not the battle at Glenrowan but a conversation with a school teacher named Curnow, who is able to raise questions that go beyond the legal points on which Kelly's trial, convinction, and execution turned. This is a discussion held through the prism of history and needs to be read in that light and reaffirms once again the cultural axiom "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

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58 of 61 people found the following review helpful:

Historical tale of outlaws, poverty, hardship and prejudice., 19 Oct 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: True History of the Kelly Gang (Hardcover)

Peter Carey has written an unusual novel that is put together as a series of letters written by Ned Kelly the famous Australian outlaw and bushranger, who became a national hero. It is presented as a raw, personal journal, written to a daughter he would never see. This is not only a very interesting concept but also provides a good insight into life in 19th century Australia. This novel is set in the desolate settler communities north of Melbourne, Victoria in the late 19th century, during a time when the first Irish settlers in Australia faced many hardships and struggles.

Peter's novel is basically a corrective to the popular conception, among some Australians, of Ned Kelly being a thug, thief and murderer. Ned's portrayal in this work is nothing less than a folk hero and freedom fighter, a defiant exemplar of Irish-Australian cussedness in the face of colonial oppression. 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 if necessary. Ned Kelly was executed by hanging for murder in 1880 in Melbourne, Victoria. In the end his mother served out her sentence in the same Melbourne prison where her son was hanged. We come to understand the poverty, hardship, and the prejudice of the colonial police force, during that period of time, particularly towards the Irish. These factors were all part of the plight of Ned Kelly and his gang. Was he a good boy gone wrong?

This is a tale of misunderstanding, foul justice, and the wringing of a family's heart. This novel is packed with history, incidents, alive with comedy and pathos, and contains everything that you could ask for in a truly great work.

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