false 110090 25 "What is it about we Australians, eh?" demands a schoolteacher near the end of Peter Carey's <I>True History of the Kelly Gang</I>. "Do we not have a Jefferson? A Disraeli? Might not we find someone better to admire than a horse-thief and a murderer?" It's the author's sole nod to the contradictory feelings Ned Kelly continues to evoke today, more than a century after his death. A psychopathic killer to some, a crusading folk hero to others, Kelly was a sharpshooting outlaw who eluded a brutal police manhunt for nearly two years. For better or worse, he's now a part of the Australian national myth. Indeed, the opening ceremonies for the Sydney Olympics featured an army of Ned Kellys dancing about to Irish music, which puts him in the symbolic company of both kangaroos and Olivia Newton-John.<p> What's to be gained from telling this illiterate bushranger's story yet again? Quite a lot, as it turns out. For starters, there is the remarkable vernacular poetry of Carey's narrative voice. Fierce, funny, ungrammatical, steeped in Irish legends and the frontier's moral code, this voice is the novel's great achievement--and perhaps the greatest in Carey's distinguished career. It paints a vivid picture of an Australia where English landowners skim off the country's best territory while government land grants allow the settlers just enough acreage to starve. Cheated, lied to, and persecuted by the authorities at every opportunity, young Kelly retains no faith in his colonial masters. What he does trust, oddly, is the power of words: <blockquote> 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 still he knew in his heart what it were to be forced to wear the white hood in prison he knew what it were to be lashed for looking a warder in the eye ... so the knowledge of unfairness were deep in his bone and in his marrow. </blockquote> Ned Kelly as literary hero? Strangely enough, that's what he becomes, at least in Carey's rendering. Pouring his heart out in a series of letters to the country at large, Kelly wants nothing more than to be <I>heard</I>--and for the dirt-poor son of an Irish convict, that's an audacious ambition indeed. It's not so surprising, then, that his story continues to speak to Australians. Like all colonial countries, Australia was built at a steep human price, and the memory of all those silenced voices lives on. <I>True History of the Kelly Gang</I> takes its epigraph from Faulkner: "The past is not dead. It is not even past." And like Faulkner's own vast chronicle of dispossession, it's haunted by tragedies as large as history itself. <I>--Mary Park</I> 2134852 book 2000 True History of the Kelly Gang: A Novel total:1346|5:346|4:533|3:328|2:108|1:31| 1346 5093 1921 192 5 5 false false Fri Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Sun Jun 10 06:46:46 -0700 2007 Sun Jun 10 06:46:51 -0700 2007 Ned Kelly when you start this book, don't be scared off by the first two pages with the killer robot. That will all become clear later. Really, between the cover design, the killer robot, and the difficult style, I thought I was going to hate this book. ...more...]]> 5 3 false false Wed Aug 13 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Aug 11 09:35:32 -0700 2008 Wed Aug 13 07:46:29 -0700 2008 more...]]> 4 2 false false Fri Feb 15 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Wed Jan 30 13:47:14 -0800 2008 Wed Jan 30 13:47:14 -0800 2008 Ned Kelly is setting down for an infant daughter he will never see. Kind of poignant actually. Carey wrote this in a nineteenth century Australian vernacular. Kind of like Trainspotting. No...more...]]> 5 2 false false Sat Apr 11 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 01 14:12:12 -0700 2009 Sat Apr 11 22:46:53 -0700 2009 1 more...]]> 4 1 false false Wed Apr 15 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 15 17:46:22 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 15 17:53:13 -0700 2009 more...]]> 4 1 false false Thu Jan 01 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Jan 26 07:09:40 -0800 2009 Mon Jan 26 07:37:54 -0800 2009 more...]]> 4 1 false false Fri Jan 23 15:26:30 -0800 2009 Sun Dec 21 20:42:10 -0800 2008 Fri Jan 23 15:26:30 -0800 2009 Ned Kelly, the Australian outlaw and bushranger, Peter Carey tells a terrific tale, one that is not quite a “true history,” but is all the same compelling. In a story that feels like an Irish folktale, a late 19th-century memoir and a western swas...more...]]> 4 1 false false Wed Oct 22 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Mon Aug 25 07:23:45 -0700 2008 Thu Oct 23 11:58:20 -0700 2008
I didn't know anything about the historic Ned Kelly going into t...more...]]> 3 1 false false Tue Apr 01 00:00:00 -0800 2003 Wed Mar 05 10:04:48 -0800 2008 Mon Apr 28 10:11:23 -0700 2008 more...]]> 5 1 false false Wed Jan 12 00:00:00 -0800 2005 Sat Apr 14 12:54:43 -0700 2007 Wed Jan 30 18:30:00 -0800 2008 more...]]> 5 1 false false Thu Jan 03 09:17:37 -0800 2008 Thu Jan 03 10:11:37 -0800 2008 more...]]> 4 1 false false Thu Oct 15 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Oct 16 12:59:59 -0700 2009 Wed Oct 28 22:40:55 -0700 2009 4 1 false false Fri Jun 19 01:48:44 -0700 2009 Fri Jun 19 02:52:27 -0700 2009 In Cold Blood Blood-nya Truman Capote, pasti bakal juga suka dengan novel ini. Termasuk saya ;)

Soalnya cerita keduanya sangat mirip. Sama-sama diangkat dari kisah nyata, dan menceritakan para pembunuh dan penjahat terkejam. Namun uniknya, para penjahat paling sadi...more...]]> 2 0 false false Sun May 31 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Jun 05 09:09:10 -0700 2009 Fri Jun 05 09:18:26 -0700 2009
Maybe this is more of a boy book, but I just couldn't really get into it. That might also have something to do with the fact that it's one of those stories where you already know how it's going to end. I absolutely *loved* Carey's "Oscar and Lucinda," but this one failed to...more...]]> 4 1 false false Fri Jul 04 21:26:33 -0700 2008 Mon Jun 08 16:27:19 -0700 2009 Ned Kelly) this is a tremendous read. It concerns an interesting period in Australian history too and realy does give a good idea of what life was like back when Australia was a real frontier.more...]]> 4 0 false false Thu Mar 26 01:28:00 -0700 2009 Thu Mar 26 02:31:48 -0700 2009 more...]]> 5 0 false false Fri Feb 20 00:00:00 -0800 2009 Mon Feb 09 07:42:31 -0800 2009 Fri Feb 20 09:57:24 -0800 2009 youthful music idol as a slavering fangirl, I resolved to be moderate in my attitudes towards artists whose work I admire. Not that I want to downplay my enjoyment of their art, or affect a "too cool for enthusiasm" attitude. But I reali...more...]]> 4 0 false false Mon Mar 19 00:00:00 -0700 2007 Fri May 15 09:47:49 -0700 2009 Fri May 15 09:48:15 -0700 2009
The writing style is indeed challenging, but I think the subject matter really makes up for it. Ned life is very compelling. He comes across as a mostly decent, g...more...]]> 3 0 false false Sun Mar 15 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Wed Mar 11 23:10:38 -0700 2009 Sun Mar 15 16:27:01 -0700 2009
I almost put this down soon after starting it - the writing style is pretty rough going. It's written as though Kelly, who only had an elementary education, wrote it, so there's no internal punctuation (no commas, question marks, ...more...]]> 4 0 false false Wed Jul 15 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Fri Jul 17 11:57:37 -0700 2009 Fri Jul 17 12:05:42 -0700 2009 more...]]>