True History of the Kelly Gang (Paperback)

Publisher and industry reviews

Jacket review

'Peter Carey has produced some very fine novels before now, but this, I would say, is his finest.' Daily Telegraph '[Peter Carey is] without question the pre-eminent literary voice of post-colonial Australia, he loves to take risks.' Guardian 'Contains pretty much everything you could ask of a novel.' New York Times Book Review

UK Kirkus review

Carey's seventh novel narrates the brief and violent life of Australian bushranger Ned Kelly. Much of the life is folk-history; the story-telling genius lies in the voice Carey has found for Ned. It is both utterly convincing and yet continually surprising, creating new pleasures on every page. Kelly's knowledge of punctuation extends no further than the full stop, so the prose hurtles along unimpeded by commas, colons, and apostrophes, spilling information before us just like an excited speaking voice. It is a voice dedicated to honesty ('this story is for you [his unseen daughter] and will contain no single lie may I burn in hell if I speak false'), direct, practical, carefully prudish ('It were eff this and ess that and she would blow their adjectival brains out'), which frequently breaks into sudden brilliance of image and colour. On the run with his beloved Mary and her sick child, Ned hears a horseman following and forces her into a hiding place in a stream, then stands waiting, gun cocked. 'A fright of blood red parrots flared and swept through the khaki forest.' Kelly's story is enough to make you weep; his father dies when he is 12, and his mother takes her tribe of children to a government land selection at 11 Mile Creek, where trees need clearing and fences building, and she sells illegal grog to make ends meet. She also sells Ned to Harry Power, who takes him out on a spree of highway robbery, which ends with 15-year-old Ned's arrest. From then on the hostility of the police to the poor Irish in general and the Kelly family in particular, is enough to foil Ned's every attempt to go straight. Kelly is a true folk hero, a bush Robin Hood, bouncing up from every setback with cartoon-character optimism - but in his language he comes alive, his deadpan humour and sharp understanding are made real, and the legend becomes a man. He describes his sweetheart Mary critically overlooking his writing as 'like a steel nibbed kookaburra on the fences in the morning sun' - a description that could equally well be applied to the authorial intelligence behind Ned's voice. Reviewed by Jane Rogers, author of Promised Lands (Kirkus UK)