True History of the Kelly Gang: Press views

Carey wins the Booker prize for the second time

Press reviews of True History of the Kelly Gang.

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The Sunday Times

Equally iron-clad in Carey's solid admiration for him, Kelly strides through the novel unscathed by any reservation or criticism. The risk of sentimentality this raises is skilfully down-played by the book's great achievement - the compelling voice that Carey gives Kelly. This partly derives, it seems, from the idiom of a public letter the real Kelly wrote in defence of his actions. "Those 120-year-old pages," Carey has said, "are like Ned's DNA."

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The Independent

The injustices heaped upon Kelly and those of his class - poor labourers of Irish stock - force the reader into a continuous reappraisal of the ambivalent nature of probity. Can a thief be honest? Is a murderer necessarily evil? The truth of the history is Ned Kelly's truth, and Carey's skill in presenting the outlaw's voice gives moral complexity to the raw stuff of legend.

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The Observer

Ned's voice is the book and it is what makes the book wonderful. It is utterly convincing and continually surprising, creating new pleasures on every page. It is simple, direct, colloquial, humorous, respectfully prudish ('It were eff this and ess that and she would blow their adjectival brains out') and shot through with poetry - 'A fright of blood-red parrots flared and swept through the khaki forest'.

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The Guardian

This Ned Kelly is a convincing and intriguing individual; Carey has indulged his appetite for language and imaginative construction in making him so. It does not matter that we are unable to pin Kelly to the facts of his life, only that we are willing and prepared to accept him as Carey reveals him to us, and to trust the kaleidoscopic array of characters and situations and the often startling images employed by Carey to create them. There is wonder here, and awe.

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The Daily Telegraph

There are some wonderful things in this book. Carey is an accomplished stylist and has entered imaginatively into the mind of his hero. But the novel as a whole must be accounted a slight disappointment. The myth of Ned Kelly has little resonance outside Australia and, as a literary character, rather than a national icon, he lacks depth and complexity.

While it is easy to admire the ventriloquial skill in the writing, it is hard to warm to a criminal narrator who has more pity for himself than his victims.

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The Times

Carey is that rare kind of writer who can remain calm and in control of the most unruly prose. Here he directs Ned Kelly¿s formless sentences at break-neck speed across the grooved and pitted terrain of a criminal life. Occasionally he lets drop an image or metaphor of staggering beauty. But it is always wild, untutored beauty, convincing in the mouth of Ned Kelly, and the best of all possible pleas in his defence.

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London Evening Standard

Whether true or not, True History of the Kelly Gang is a terrific read. Kelly may not use commas but he knows how to paint a picture in words: "a fright of blood red parrots flared and swept through the khaki forest". As he makes his way across "the Strathbogies, the Warbies and the Wombat Ranges", his love of Australia shines through: "It is always such a lovely thing to see proof of what contentment the colony might provide if there is ever justice."