BBC
True History of the Kelly Gang, by Peter Carey, won the Booker Prize in 2001. Blending fact and fiction, the author shares with us thirteen parcels of documents in which the notorious Australian outlaw, Ned Kelly, addresses the story of his life to his unseen daughter.
Carey was inspired by Kelly's Jerilderie Letter, which has been described as "unpunctuated, Irish vindictive prose. It had echoes of James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. It was primitive, wildly exciting and modernist."
In True History of the Kelly Gang the first person narrator sounds authentic and convincing. This is an uneducated man, driven by a passionate desire to explain his actions. Carey conveys the extreme poverty and hardship endured by the Kelly family.
At the age of seventeen, after serving a prison sentence, Ned declares that he is a child no more: "although in truth I do not know what childhood or youth I ever had".
His aspirations in life are not excessive. In a poignant passage he describes "2 blessed yr. of peace", during which he read Lorna Doone three times, and parts of the Bible and some poems by Shakespeare: "I had no interest in the world outside". His love for his sweetheart, Mary, is also described with touching sincerity.
A devoted and dutiful son; a faithful friend; an iconic Robin Hood figure: Carey’s Ned Kelly may well win your sympathy and admiration. On the other hand, you might feel that this work of faction has dubious merit.
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