MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2001
Booker club: True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
Remaking Ned
Robert Edric salutes an outlaw imagination in Peter Carey's new book, True History of the Kelly Gang
True History of the Kelly Gang
Peter Carey
349pp, Faber
Robert Edric
Saturday 6 January 2001
Pushed centre stage with neither a definite nor an indefinite article for moral or theatrical support, True History of the Kelly Gang signals the first of its many deceits. Peter Carey's skills, passions and obsessions are all fully on display in this long-awaited take on colonial Australia's most enduring myth. Ned Kelly, cattle thief, bank robber and folk hero, was hanged at the age of 25 in Melbourne jail in 1880. Carey tells his story in the first person, in a narrative - recalling Ondaatje's Billy the Kid, Hanson's Jesse James and perhaps even Burroughs's Dutch Schultz - that his publishers refer to as a dazzling act of ventriloquism.