Peter Carey’s Booker Prize-winner, True History of the Kelly Gang, is presented as a collection of the writings of the famed Australian outlaw Ned Kelly. Largely uneducated, Kelly’s grasp of punctuation leaves a lot to be desired, but he tells his story with wit and verve. The style actually enhances the effect, as the reader often will have to re-read a passage to figure out where to insert the commas and periods in order to discern the meaning.
Carey’s Kelly tells his tale from the very beginning, growing up as the child of an Irish family in Australia. His father an ex-con eventually imprisoned for a crime committed by Ned, his mother over-burdened with children and trying to provide by running an illegal saloon, or “shebeen.” After his father’s day he becomes the unwilling apprentice of a notorious bushranger named Harry Power, who teaches him the ins and outs of a life of crime.
The novel takes it’s time getting to the more familiar part of the tale, where Kelly and his gang inspire many of the poor and downtrodden of Australia by standing up to the corrupt and oppressive police. Kelly struggles to free his mother from an unjust prison sentence, and schemes to get the public on his side by sharing the loot from his robberies.
Ultimately, though the pattern of the story, with it’s long stretches of Ned and his friends hiding from the law, becomes a tad repetitive, Carey’s achievement in impersonating the crude charm of his protagonist makes True History of the Kelly Gang a remarkable accomplishment, and worthy of its accolades.