Book - True History of the Kelly Gang

by Peter Carey

I bought this book for a dose of Australiana and it was definitely quite surreal to read about the Australian bush in the middle of the Austrian alps. My knowledge of Ned Kelly's history is pretty sketchy, to be honest (despite seeing the Heath Ledger film, which was decidedly unmemorable) and I know that this is a work of fiction, but my understanding is that it is based around a lot of research on the actual events of Kelly's life.

The novel is written in Ned Kelly's voice, as though he had written the book as a series of letters to his daughter to clarify and defend the True History of the gang. Peter Carey has deliberately adopted the style of someone with minimal literacy, so punctuation and grammar are non-essential luxuries. At times, this frustrated me as I had to reread some sections to work out exactly what was being said. This is part of the joy of the novel, though. Carey has made Ned Kelly a very believable and sympathetic character - this is one of those novels that Nick Hornby would say "sticks to the sides".

I have not read much of Peter Carey's other work, (only My Life As A Fake) but I was surprised at how readable this book was. He spins an excellent narrative and as events unfolded, I always wanted to know what happened next. I think I expected his writing to be quite heavy and "literary", which it certainly isn't in this novel. I wouldn't list it as my favourite novel ever, but I definitely enjoyed reading it and it was nice to have a little piece of home in the middle of Europe. I've now donated the book to the library at the Aqua-Dome hotel, so someone else will have the experience of reading about the Australian bush while surrounded by the mountains. The power of contrast indeed...