The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey

My sister and I went on holiday to Scandinavia two years ago and as we had decided to travel from country to country by train this meant joyfully having time to read but also that we had the added weight of the books to consider.  Clearly this is not an unusual dilemma for the book-loving traveler, and you may well start extolling the advantages of a Kindle or similar device in such situations, but that’s another whole issue!  Anyway, we decided to share books.  Now, when going on holiday I usually choose a classic which will last for the duration of the trip and which I will then associate with that particular trip, for example, ‘War and Peace’ I read in the Languedoc region of France.  However, my sister has a different approach of reading novels by authors from the area she is visiting or are set there.  So that is what we did, including ‘Hunger’ by Knut Hamsun and my souvenir from Helsinki was an English translation of ‘The Kalevala’.  However, returning to my most recent Booker despite it’s entrenchment in Australian identity, my annual leave and budget did not unfortunately extend to a trip Down Under and I therefore read the majority of the novel while on holiday in Malta!  And it wasn’t even as if the climate was similar as I visited during a rather unseasonably cold spell.

Still I don’t think that it was solely the lack of temperature replication that resulted in my rather indifferent view of this novel.  I tried not to let my opinion of Peter Carey’s previous Booker winner of 1988 cloud my judgement of his 2001 contribution especially as he is the only author to have won the Booker twice – which is clearly an admirable feat.  He follows an interesting approach, attempting to convey that Ned Kelly himself wrote the story as a record of the true facts for his daughter whom he never met.  Therefore the usual rules of punctuation, grammar and spelling are not utilised to give the book a more authentic and immediate feel for the writing of an uneducated man, however, as I mentioned while reviewing ‘Sacred Hunger’, it makes for uncomfortable and rather annoying reading.  Furthermore, as is often the unfortunate curse of the historical novel, the plot is restricted by the nature of events which in this case, although I hesitate to describe it as such, ended up becoming rather tedious – which obviously is strange because he actually led an eventful life. 

Regrettably, I didn’t find the setting of the story particularly interesting or engaging although the novel does effectively highlight the hardships and injustices of life in the Outback and the difficult choices that were made due to loyalties of family and friendship.  It also educated me on the story of Ned Kelly about whom I knew very little, although as is the case with so many historical figures, the truth is so lost in legend and myth that it is probably impossible to extract fact from fiction.  I can see why it won, as an ambitious account of a controversial figure and I’m glad to have read it but it just wasn’t for me and won’t be one I’ll be planning to re-read.