True History of the Kelly Gang (2001)
Who wrote it?
Peter Phillip Carey (1943-; active 1966-), born Victoria, Australia. Carey is a much decorated author of novels of and short stories, nominated for the Booker five times and one of only five authors to win it twice.
His writing career started somewhat less auspiciously. Having dropped out of his Melbourne science degree due to lack of interest, and working for an ad agency, he wrote five novels in the Sixties, all of which were rejected. His only published work in that decade was a single short story. Things picked up in the Seventies on the short story front, as his advertising career developed - first in London and then on return to Australia. His first published novel was Bliss (1981), and he received his first Booker nomination for his second, Illywhacker (1984). His first win came in 1988 for the excellent Oscar and Lucinda.
What's it about?
True History of the Kelly Gang is a heavily fictionalized account of the Australian legend of Ned Kelly, a national icon to many, a “horse-thief and murderer” to others. Set in late nineteenth century Victoria, in a rural landscape north-east of Melbourne, it covers Kelly’s life from childhood through through his apprenticeship with notorious bushranger Harry Power, to infamy with his brother and two friends as the “Kelly Gang”, culminating in a dramatic shootout with the gang clad in “ironman” costumes.
Kelly’s was a story that had been told many times before. What differs here is Carey’s commitment to getting us inside Ned’s head. He does this through telling the majority of the tale in a painstakingly recreated vernacular, based on a surviving letter from Kelly which captivated Carey as a student, coinciding with his reading of Joyce. He drew stylistic similarities in the intense, almost stream of consciousness (punctuation-free) form of Kelly’s letter, with Joyce’s fiction, particularly in Ulysses.
Additionally, the novel is mostly presented as a series of fragments of an imagined diary by Kelly, with captions before each section detailed the supposed physical status of the manuscript. While the gist of the novel is true to known facts, there is a huge amount of embellishment, most notably giving Kelly a love interest and daughter, to whom the purported manuscript is addressed.
What I liked
You can’t help but be impressed by the sheer dedication to the cause here. Carey writes in his acknowledgements that this was an undertaking that threatened to overwhelm him, and you can certainly see why. The sustaining of this mode of writing, notably lacking in commas for the vast majority of the 400 pages, is seriously impressive.
It’s a story that I previously knew little about and probably would have struggled to engage with via a non-fiction approach or a movie, so I feel like I’ve learned something… at least about the spirit and meaning of the Kelly mythology, if nothing else.
Taking you inside Kelly’s mind certainly helps you understand the nature of the enduring appeal of his story. It brings passion to the complexities of his situation, as a fighter of injustice against a corrupt police and state, and defender of the honour of the transported Irish settlers, condemned to poverty by harsh laws. At the same time, it’s ruthless in depicting the aspects of petty criminality (and later, worse) that characterise detractors.
There are numerous memorable moments in here, that stick in the mind with powerful visual imagery. Notably the final standoff, and the earlier boxing match against “Wild” Wright, but every section has at least one standout moment .
What I didn’t like
For the most part, this was a “respect rather than enjoy” novel for me. Large patches of it dragged, and I found the language (though initially impressive) a barrier to enjoyment more often than one that elevated the story. Overall the book grew on me for the reasons above, but at an early stage I did grumpily refer to it to my partner as “Like reading my parents narrating a game of Red Dead Redemption via medium of unpunctuated WhatsApp messages.” Ahem.
Perhaps being a newcomer to the world of Ned Kelly didn’t help. I feel like there’s a degree to which this book almost works as fan fiction - references, winks, allusions, to events and characters I knew virtually nothing about. It feels like an exercise in adding to a rich mythology (meta-mythology?) rathe than straightforward storytelling?
Food & drink pairings
Johnnycakes
Illicit liquor at the shebeen
Fun facts
A weird one here from judge Philip Hensher on Beryl Bainbridge missing out yet again. I guess the Booker had been burned by accusations of prizes being given for authors over their novels, and wanted to avoid that happening again, but this almost seems doubly unfair on the perennially overlooked Bainbridge:
“I regretted that media excitement over Beryl Bainbridge actually damaged her chances with According to Queeney. We realised that if we shortlisted her, she had to win. There was no point in blotting out the winner’s publicity with a storm of “Beryl Bridesmaid Again” headlines.”
Hensher is unusually positive about the whole experience of judging, too:
“For once in your life you take a synchronic slice through the English-language novel, and see exactly what’s interesting it at that moment.”
A movie adaptation by Snowtown director Justin Kurzel and with a starry cast including the likes of George Mackay as Ned and Russell Crowe as Power was released in 2019. Actually looks pretty decent going by the trailer. Has anyone seen it?
Vanquished Foes
Ian McEwan (Atonement)
Andrew Miller (Oxygen)
David Mitchell (number9dream)
Rachel Seiffert (The Dark Room)
Ali Smith (Hotel World)
Quite a heavy hitting shortlist! I loved number9dream but can sort of see why it wasn’t a winner (less sure why Ghostwritten hadn’t made the shortlist previously though.) And I think we can all agree that Atonement would have been a worthier McEwan winner than Amsterdam…. Interestingly Hensher also talked about “want[ing] to do more for Nick Hornby’s How to be Good” - which might have been a bit of a Booker curveball in the direction of populism.
Kate Grenvilles's The Idea of Perfection took this year's Orange/Women's Prize, triumphing over 2000’s Booker winner The Blind Assassin and 2001 nominee Ali Smith’s Hotel World.
Context
In 2001:
9/11; declaration of "War on Terror"
Taliban destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas
2001 US Anthrax attacks
British "Shoe bomber" Richard Reid attempts to destroy a US passenger airliner
Former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic arrested, to be tried war crimes charges
Foot & Mouth outbreak in the UK
Silvio Berlusconi becomes Italian PM for the second time
Blair and New Labour win second UK election landslide
Race Riots in Bradford, UK, following National Front violence
Charles Ingram cheating scandal on Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? in the UK
Provisional IRA commences disarmament after peace talks
Bankruptcy of Enron in the US
China joins the World Trade Organisation
12 killed in Indian Parliament attack
Launch of iPod and iTunes store
Launch of Wikipedia
Release of Nintendo Gamecube and Microsoft Xbox
First space tourist, Dennis Tito, travels to the International Space Station
Jonathan Franzen, The Corrections
W. G. Sebald, Austerlitz
Malorie Blackman, Noughts and Crosses
Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation
Movie adaptations of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, and Bridget Jones' Diary
The Royal Tenenbaums
A Beautiful Mind
Amélie
The Producers musical opens on Broadway
Death of singer Aaliyah, along with 7 others, in a light aircraft crash in the Bahamas
Pop Idol premieres on ITV in the UK
Daft Punk, Discovery
Missy Elliott, Miss E... So Addictive
The Strokes, Is This It
Gorillaz, Gorillaz
Life Lessons
The English are the bad guys
??
I dunno, metal armour is not necessarily bulletproof?
Score
7.5
Hard to be too harsh on this one as it is “adjectivally” impressive. But I couldn’t go higher as the experience wasn’t always a lot of fun.
Ranking to date:
The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro (1989) - 9.5
Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie (1981) - 9.5
Disgrace - J. M. Coetzee (1999) - 9.5
Moon Tiger - Penelope Lively (1987) - 9
Sacred Hunger - Barry Unsworth (1992) - 9
Oscar & Lucinda - Peter Carey (1988) - 9
The Sea, The Sea - Iris Murdoch (1978) - 9
Life & Times of Michael K. - J. M. Coetzee (1983) - 9
The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy (1997) - 9
Schindler’s Ark - Thomas Keneally (1982) - 9
The Bone People - Keri Hulme (1985) - 8.5
How Late it Was, How Late - James Kelman (1994) - 8.5
Troubles - J.G. Farrell (1970, "Lost Booker") - 8.5
The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood (2000) - 8
Possession - A. S. Byatt (1990) - 8
Saville - David Storey (1976) - 8
The Siege of Krishnapur - J.G. Farrell (1973) - 8
The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje (1992) - 7.5
Rites of Passage - William Golding (1980) - 7.5
True History of the Kelly Gang - Peter Carey (2001) - 7.5
Offshore - Penelope Fitzgerald (1979) - 7.5
Last Orders - Graham Swift (1996) - 7
The Elected Member - Bernice Rubens (1970) - 7
The Conservationist - Nadine Gordimer (1974) - 7
Holiday - Stanley Middleton (1974) - 7
Heat & Dust - Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1975) - 6.5
In a Free State* - V.S. Naipaul (1971) - 6.5
Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha - Roddy Doyle (1993) - 6
G. - John Berger (1972) - 6
The Famished Road - Ben Okri (1991) - 6
Something to Answer For - P. H. Newby (1969) - 5.5
The Ghost Road** - Pat Barker (1995) - 5.5
Staying On - Paul Scott (1977) - 5
Amsterdam - Ian McEwan (1998) - 5
Hotel du Lac - Anita Brookner (1984) - 4.5
The Old Devils - Kingsley Amis (1986) - 4
*Read in later condensed edition.
**Third part of a trilogy of which I hadn’t read pts 1&2
Next up
Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, which has never struck me as something I’ve actually wanted to read. So let’s see if I’m pleasantly surprised…
