Athena K's Review - True History of the Kelly Gang

I had the fortune to live in Australia for 6 months, where I first heard the story of Ned Kelly.  While I was in Perth, the movie "Ned Kelly" was released (starring Heath Ledger) and a friend won tickets to the premier from a radio station.   While new to me, my Australian friends had been raised on the story of Ned Kelly, who is often compared to Jesse James or some other romanticized American outlaw.  However, I was never able to connect to the story of the man driven to a life of crime by poverty and injustice, who is only captured after a huge firefight and show of insane bravery - until now.

The voice Peter Carey gives to Ned Kelly as he narrates his life story is at first a bit hard to get into.  Ned's grammar is rough, his sentences run-on and he never uses a comma.  He does however used several mid 19th-century abbreviations: v. for very, cd. for could, and & instead of and.  It took me 10 or 15 pages to begin to feel comfortable with his style.  After that, the style is another reflection of the Australia of Ned Kelly's experience - rough, casual, sometimes even violent.  Adjectivally brilliant.

Ned's first person narration changes only once.  When he describes the first time he left home and became an outlaw, he describes the experiences as that of "the boy."  Marking his moment of transition was very powerful to me - it demonstrated that in many ways his fate was forced upon him, and that his becoming an outlaw was something others did to him.  The only other times the narration shifts is toward and at the end, when the final episodes of the story are relayed in newspaper articles.  I thought this was effective, and in many ways necessary, but I think I would have been happier if the story had ended with Ned's words.

My American edition of the novel praises it as a Great American Novel.  I couldn't disagree more - this novel could not be more Australian (even though it opens with a quote from Faulkner).  Peter Carey's descriptions of Ned Kelly's life experience, language, and even his metaphors are to me as Australian as Mark Twain or Steinbeck are American.  For example, Ned's description of himself as a young boy, just before his first arrest:

I were 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

Ned speaks of an Australian spirit hardened by the knowledge of "unfairness" from an early age.  The injustice inherent in the country's birth was so raw and real, and I finally understood what makes Ned Kelly a hero:

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 he still knew in his heart what it were to be forced to wear the white hood in prison he knew what it were like to be lashed for looking a warder in the eye and even a posh fellow like the Moth  had breathed that air so the knowledge of unfairness were deep in his bone and marrow.

Lorraine's Review - The True HIstory of the Kelly Gang - 2001

This is an epic novel about Ned Kelly –the famous bushranger and bank robber who lived in Australia in the 19th century. Carey has created a construct in which the “papers” of Kelly have been found. Various packages of this archival material are described in each chapter heading and a précis follows of the high points of each section. I loved this ingenious way of presenting Kelly’s story which is told directly from his pen and life. Kelly wants his daughter to know the “true” story about him and not believe what is written in the newspapers or said about him. And of course it is an ironic motif for a fictional story of an outlaw.


The idea for the source papers construction may have come from the “The Jerilderie Letter” which was a statement narrated by Ned Kelly about the gang and the treatment of the Irish in rural Australia. This document was donated to the State Library of Victoria in 2000 and had been in private hands previously.


Carey’s vernacular text reads like one huge run on sentence. This style gives a sense of urgency to the telling. It reminded me (with its lack of punctuation) of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (Knopf, 2006 which had the same omnipresent sense of doom for the protagonists. In both books I felt like I was freefalling through the story. This lack of punctuation also made the novel difficult to read as I often read the same sentence several times to decipher its phrasing.


Carey’s rough writing style really reflects the brutality of Outback life in Australia in the 19th century and in Kelly’s family. Hardship drove the settlers to lawlessness with the punitive measures imposed on these “selectors” if they failed to comply with all of the requirements for living on and working on their land. The novel also describes the corruption of the police and how the justice system was so arbitrary.


The Kellys were part of a large family with a history of horse theft and clashes with the police. They were harassed because they were Irish Catholics. There is plenty of incident and adventure in the novel – including transvestitism, fights and brawling, betrayal by the “traps” and the excitement and tenderness of Ned’s love. Kelly is fiercely loyal to his mother who is cruelly imprisoned and she has had a pulverizing life burdened by too many children. I felt only enormous sympathy for Ned and his family but in real life he was not such a hero at all times.

Horses are a prominent motif in the story – as a means of making a living through theft to using them for escape. As a metaphor they express a lot of ideas about Kelly from his yearning for freedom to his unbreakable spirit in his life and writing. The story itself is also like a wild ride through Kelly’s life.


This is a book I never would have read before joining “The Complete Booker.” I admired this novel and am looking forward to reading more by Peter Carey.

Peter Carey: True History of the Kelly Gang

This book is a first person fictionalised account of the life of Ned Kelly, a child of poor convict settlers in Australia who in the book, and in reality was notorious for his criminal record, for which he was executed.

I struggled with this book as I have difficulty with all books that blur the line between fiction and fact. The title was my first stumbling block, and one I have become increasingly annoyed by. The book is meant to be fiction! I do not understand the thinking behind the title.

Interestingly, in my researches about the book I came across a course in contemporary Australian literature at the Masaryk University (in the Czech Republic). This book is one of those listed as recommended reading, and is listed as follows:

True history of the Kelly gang. Edited by Peter Carey

This seems proof that there is confusion in some quarters as to whether the book is fiction or fact.

I tend to research every book I read. Normally I do this after reading the book so my thoughts on it are not coloured by other people's perceptions, but half way through reading this book I could bear the uncertainty no longer. I had to know just how factual this book was, and so I went online. I discovered some very interesting things, the most interesting of which is the Jerilderie Letter, held in the State Library of Victoria and available online here.

The Jerilderie Letter is an 8,000 word letter dictated, in reality, by Ned Kelly to Joe Byrne during the siege of Jerilderie in February 1879.

Page 9/10 reads "he roared like a big calf attacked by dogs and shifted several yards of the fence I got his hands at the back of his neck and trid to make him let the revolver go but he stuck to it like grim death to a dead volunteer he called for assistance to a man named Cohen and Barnett, Lewis, Thompson, Jewitt two blacksmiths who was looking on I dare not strike any of there as I was bound to keep the peace or I could have spread those curs like dung in a paddock they got ropes tied my hands and feet and Hall beat me over the head with his six chambered colts revolver nine stitches were put in some of the cuts by Dr Hastings And when Wild Wright and my mother came they could trace us across the street by the blood in the dust and which spoiled the lustre of the paint on the gate-post of the Barracks "

Read page 194, the last part of "parcel 6" and you will find that Peter Carey has merely edited the text a little.

I have a huge issue with the fact that Peter Carey has used Ned Kelly's words without any acknowledgement of that. Perhaps there is no legal duty to make such an acknowledgement when the writer of the words is over a century dead, but it shows a lack of respect that irks me.

The publishers blurb "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" seems preposterous when that wild, passionate and original voice is the true voice of Ned Kelly as evidenced by the Jerilderie Letter. They are more correct to call some of the writing "a dazzling act of ventriloquism".

The book doesn't just use the information given in the letter, Carey embellishes his book with fictional differences. And I can't say that the writing is bad, or the fictional parts unbelievable, I just like to know whether I am reading fact or fiction, and so could not like this book.

True History of the Kelly Gang

True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey


Pages: 368
First Published: 2000
Rating: 4.5/5

First Sentence:

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.

Comments: The life story of Ned Kelly, Australian Bushranger and Outlaw, as told through his fictional diaries. Wow, this was an amazing book. From page two I was hooked on the story and the life of this man. I found myself absolutely intrigued by him and since I started the book I have been reading about him online as well. Since the story is told through Ned's point of view we come to feel for him and root for him, perhaps as the Australian people themselves did at the time. This was a wonderful book, you really can't ask for more in a novel.

The one negative comment I have is about the lack of punctuation. I don't feel it added any authenticity to the story at all but instead showed the author's own arrogance. The lack of sentence structure made this a very slow read. My reading speed decreased dramatically. I would often have to read a 'sentence' 2 or three times to understand and this particularly happened when people were speaking as the lack of quotations in the book leaves the reader unsure of who is speaking at many times. However, this should not be a deterrent to reading the book. As I read the last page I closed the book and spoke aloud to the empty room, "Wow, that was good." This book will be certainly be a contender for my best book of the year.

-Nicola

True History of the Kelly Gang - Laura's Review

True History of the Kelly Gang
Peter Carey
368 pages

First sentence: By dawn at least half the members of the Kelly gang were badly wounded and it was then the creature appeared from behind police lines.

Reflections: Ned Kelly was an Australian outlaw bushranger in the 1800s. His Irish father was convicted of a crime and sent to Van Diemen's land. The family settled in Australia after his release. Ned was forced into adulthood at an early age, and was sent to be an apprentice to another bushranger at the age of 15. From there he fell into a life of crime, and gained notoriety by consistently eluding capture. However, he also remained fiercely loyal to his large family, especially his mother and brother.

Peter Carey recounts Ned's life story in Ned's own voice, complete with the grammatical anomalies and lack of punctuation that might be expected from a semi-literate young man. The story is compelling and the character development, wonderful. Ned Kelly is a violent criminal, and yet very likeable. I actually found myself cheering him on in his escapades with the police.

True History of the Kelly Gang reminded me of other "outlaw" tales, like the story of Jesse James, or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. This is not a subject that I'm particularly interested in, and I only read this book because it won the Booker Prize in 2001. I was not disappointed; in fact, I found this book absolutely delightful and difficult to put down. Peter Carey is one of only two authors to win the Booker Prize twice (the other is J. M. Coetzee). Now I can't wait to read his 1988 Booker winner, Oscar and Lucinda. ( )

My original review can be found here.