Ned Kelly - You Decide What's True (True History of the Kelly Gang - Peter Carey)

Member Name: Krystles

Product:	True History of the Kelly Gang - Peter Carey
Date:	26/04/09 (474 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Engaging and unique story

Disadvantages: The style opf writing takes a little getting used to

True History of the Kelly Gang is a historical novel by Australian writer Peter Carey. Published in 2000, it was the 2001 winner of the Booker Prize. Despite claiming to be a true history, the book is fiction, but is based loosely on actual events in Kelly's life. The story is separated into thirteen sections allegedly fashioned from original manuscripts written by Ned Kelly himself. The novel is written in a distinguishing dialect, with a minimum of punctuation or grammar. The style is based upon Kelly's only surviving piece of writing.

Ned Kelly is an iconic Australian figure. This standing, despite the simplistic characterisation of Kelly as a 'bushranger' exemplifies a particular ingredient of the Australian psyche, a desire to support an apparent underdog. Kelly represents this through his stand against the establishment of the day. Having been represented in film by luminaries such as Mick Jagger and Heath Ledger, Carey's novel attempts to tell the story of Ned Kelly from the protagonists own point of view. This allows Carey to imagine the motivations and events that influenced Ned Kelly's life and the paths that would lead to his battle at Glenrowan.

The Author

Peter Carey is an Australian novelist. He is a two time winner of the Booker prize and has also won the Miles Franklin Award three times.
Peter Carey was born in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, in 1943. He originally worked in advertising until moving to New York in 1990. He has written and number of well regarded novels including Oscar and Lucinda and Jack Maggs.

Plot summary

The novel is written, for the most part in the words of notorious Australian bushranger Ned Kelly. The story traverses Kelly's life from childhood to death, with the events after Ned's capture and sentencing to death told by someone else, presumably a hostage from the siege at Glenrowan who escapes with the manuscripts that hold the Ned Kelly story. As the story is historical fiction, it uses real events interwoven with fictitious imaginings to piece together a likely representation of Ned Kelly, his family and friends and the authority figures who would be key in the life and, poignantly, death of Ned Kelly. Crucially Carey departs from what is known about Kelly's life and gives him a lover and a daughter. The manuscripts are actually almost like letters to his daughter, for whom he has been chronicling his memoirs.

The story begins with Ned Kelly's father, John "Red" Kelly, an Irishman transported to Van Diemen's Land, while it was still a penal colony. Upon release he settles in the colony of Victoria. He marries Ellen Quinn and they move to rural area northeast of Melbourne. Red Kelly is shown to have had frequent encounters with the colonial police forces, and he is imprisoned and dies when Ned is twelve years of age.

Under the Land Grant Act, Ned's mother moves the family to North Eastern Victoria and the family begin a new life. He takes a lover in bushranger Harry Power and he agrees to take on Ned as an apprentice. It is Power who trains Ned giving him an education of the land, hideouts, and strategies for bushranging. Kelly falls out with Power and returns to his family's settlement.

The story here begins to show Ned Kelly as making an earnest attempt at an honest living, working hard to make the settlement work. But when a friend sells him a stolen horse without his knowledge, Ned finds himself arrested and imprisoned for three years. After release he works as a sawmill hand, but when a rival squatter appropriates a herd of his horses he is drawn back into bushranging. This is helped when Ned shoots Alex Fitzpatrick, a policeman, in the hand after he pulls a revolver on the Kelly family. The policeman has been involved with Ned's sister, but Ned finds out that Fitzpatrick has not been faithful. Despite dressing the wound and Fitzpatrick's undertaking that no action will be taken, warrants are issued for the arrest of Ned and his younger brother Dan.

As Ned and Dan hide out in the hills of northeast Victoria they are joined by friends Steve Hart and Joe Byrne. When Ned's mother is arrested to entice Ned to give himself up, Ned's life has crossed a line from which you sense he will not return. Four policemen detached to kill the gang, after attempts to arrest them fail, are ambushed at Stringybark Creek. After this event, now wanted 'cop killers, with no turning back, the Kelly Gang begin to rob banks to get money to survive, and share their proceeds with the lower-class settlers who give them refuge while on the run from the law.

It is during this time that Ned Kelly meets a young Irish girl named Mary Hearn. He falls in love with Mary and they make plans to flee the colony after she becomes pregnant with his child. Mary is the one who encourages Ned to write story down for his future child, who she fears will never know its father. Mary eventually uses money from Ned to emigrate to San Francisco with Ned's unborn daughter, while Ned remains, unwilling to leave Australia while his mother is still imprisoned.

The final climatic scene takes place in the town of Glenrowan, where squads of police descend upon the site where the gang are staked out with hostages. It is here where the iconic Ned Kelly image of a man wearing a suit of plate steel armour has its genesis. The policemen lay siege to the town and engage in a furious shootout with the armour-clad gang, wounding Ned and killing the other three members of the gang. Kelly's account stops suddenly just before the shootout. The story of the battle and Ned's eventual death by hanging are related by a secondary narrator, identified only as 'S.C'.

My Opinion

Having studied Ned Kelly along with other bushrangers during my school years, I had a least a cursory knowledge of his life and key events that occurred and his final battle at Glenrowan is particularly infamous. I have also seen a particularly dreadful Hedge Ledger movie in which he played 'our hero', but this movie was so dull that I can barely remember what happened. This novel however relates a story where unfortunate states of affair and the frequent injustices act as a catalyst that pushes Ned Kelly into a life of crime.

Despite the title, this is not actually the true tale. Peter Carey has described it as being "98% made up but (that it) really respects the 2% that we know". Carey has used known facts and augmented the story with imagination to fill in the empty spaces. To be honest though, it isn't just the story that is intriguing; it is the way in which it is delivered.

As a 1st person narrative, Carey has done an outstanding job in portraying the unique voice of Kelly authentically. The text is simple but believable, written in language one would expect of an uneducated bushranger. Peter Carey has taken inspiration from a letter actually written by Kelly that was found in 2000. He captures the tone of the era and style of the narrator by utilising poor grammar and structure. Sentences often run together with little or no punctuation. The book contains no commas when written in Kelly's voice. Dialogue is not marked either, making it difficult to identify speech. The absence of conventional punctuation makes reading difficult at first, but as the rhythm and style of the prose becomes familiar the story begins to captivate. Within a few pages, the language goes unnoticed and the story comes to the fore as you get caught up in the rhythm of its prose.

On the whole, the style adds authenticity and makes the story seem plausible. Kelly begins his story with a line that says that his account "will contain no single lie may I burn in hell if I speak false." This takes the reader straight to the heart of Kelly. A connection made to the character of Ned Kelly. As the reader and leads you to believe that this is a voice dedicated to honesty. You get right into the mindset of Kelly, essential in explaining and accepting why he acted as he did. You can sense hopelessness on occasions but it's his strength, resilience and optimism create sympathy for his plight, despite his lawlessness.

It is the precise nature of Kelly's lawlessness that is central to Carey's book. Viewing his crimes as reactions against a cruel and unjust system, you are presented with the notion that Ned and his gang were driven to crime by a need to protect themselves and their families. It provides a fuller understanding of the gang and gives you a sense of motivations for actions. The novel reflects on the way in which criminal behaviour is often dehumanised by providing a notorious criminal with a voice that explains and puts into context actions and choices taken. Kelly decried the ill treatment of the poor would come to their defence. Because of this the establishment would see him as a scoundrel and a thug whilst the common folk considered him a hero.

Because of Kelly's portrayal in a compassionate and heroic light, the book created controversy when first released in Australia, where the historical figure is still reviled by many. But as Kelly remains and interesting an iconic figure in Australian history, Carey's attempts to provide an alternative viewpoint is worthwhile. Carey provides a sensitive account that reveals an unfortunate victim of circumstance whose deeds were motivated by desperation or courage of his convictions.

Summary: A unique and original perspective of a controversial historical figue