Next installment of Tommi Reads the World – still in the As.
Country: Australia
Title: True History of the Kelly Gang
Author: Peter Carey
Language: English
Translator: N/A
Publisher: Alred A. Knopf (2001)
“Wait to see what more there is to hear my daughter for in the end we poor uneducated people will all be made noble in the fire.”
Peter Carey’s Booker Prize winning True History of the Kelly Gang is a fictionalized account of the infamous Ned Kelly, a bushranger who reached folk hero status. My knowledge of Ned Kelly was limited to having heard Johnny Cash sing about him – “Ned Kelly took the blame. Ned Kelly won the fame. Ned brought the shame. And then Ned Kelly hanged.” I wonder if I’d known more about the Kelly Gang if the novel would have hit differently – I think it’s likely that framework would have resulted in five stars. But it came in at four – and here is my adjectival review.
The novel, which is Faulkner meets Dickens meets Larry McMurtry (Ned Kelly reminds me a bit of Jake Spoon) meets Robin Hood, has a very distinctive voice that took me a bit longer to hear, but once I caught the voice and the rhythm, I was hooked; from birth to the noose, I fell in love with Ned Kelly. (And that was before I even saw his picture. Whew, but he was rather attractive.)
Ned’s Irish father was sent to Van Diemen’s Land to serve time for stealing pigs. He married Ned’s mother after serving his sentence. He dies when Ned is 12. After his father dies, Ned’s mother does what she has to do to provide for her children – she becomes a bootlegger who invites numerous men into her bed. (Much to Ned’s dismay.) She indentures Ned to one of her bedmates when Ned is 15 – Harry Power is a bushranger on the run from the law and his relationship with young Ned is a complicated one. (Much like the relationship between Ned and his mother.)
Ned refuses to turn on anyone, often shouldering the blame instead of betraying someone who would betray him with the flash of a coin. “…we learned the traitors better than the saints… I could not betray him.” The “him” in this instance is Harry Power, but the scenario repeats itself often. Ned’s loyalty, charm and grit make him beloved to his own, but hated by authorities; by the time he’s 26, he’s the most wanted man in Victoria. He is eventually captured and hanged – but the story of Ned Kelly didn’t die dangling from a rope, as evident by the hold it still has.
It’s not an “easy” read and it takes a minute or two to adjust to the writing style and voice, but it’s worth it.
Read this book.
A Girl Named Tommi 