The True History of the Kelly Gang
by Peter Carey
Within a couple of paragraphs, I was sure I was not going to like this book.
As has been noted more than once in this column, STYLE definitely matters - and if the writer relies heavily on an unusual or distracting style, it will usually tire me out, and I'll read resentfully or not at all.
Though the first paragraph was a sentence that contained not a single comma to separate its 6 thoughts and 57 words, it was nevertheless compelling enough to keep me reading and pretty quickly, in spite of its eccentricities, I was thoroughly into the story.
Based on an actual man's life, Ned Kelly is something of a mythic figure in Australia, something akin to the highwaymen of Great Britain, who plagued travelers from the early 1600s to the mid-late 19th century. Often, at least in the romantic stories, highwaymen cut a dashing figure and were known dramatically as "gentlemen of the road." They robbed from horseback, and curiously, women dressed as men - and in this account, men dressed as women - were included in their number.
The bushrangers of Australia, while as storied as the British highwaymen, were a bit down the social scale, as might be expected from a country built by British convicts transported to the wilds of an untamed continent.
Carey has chosen to write his story in an unrelenting vernacular. At first difficult to catch, much like listening to an unfamiliar accent, the reader quickly settles into a rhythm, inserting the punctuation and translating the slang. For instance, the British "stand and deliver" of the highwayman becomes the Australian "bail up," and Ned, who begins telling us his story as a young boy of 12, refuses to write curse words. Instead, he offers "b-----d" for bastard and "adjectival" for "f*cking." These words occur frequently, but eventually become both endearing and quickly understood. In fact, after a few chapters, I was convinced that there was no other voice than that of Ned Kelly to tell the story, and that if he had "spoken" in pure, grammatically correct English it would have been wrong. I would never have gotten into the heart and mind of Ned as well.
And, in fact, Carey has written the book as if Ned were writing his memoir. Each section of the book, more or less a long chapter, covers a distinct period in his life, in chronological order, and marks both his ascent into strength, notoriety and manhood, and his descent into a life of crime, prison, and time on the run. It covers the transportation of his Irish father to Van Diemen's Land, to that man's imprisonment and the family's attempt to survive without him, Ned's mother resorting to running a "shebeen" (a distillery and secret pub) and her lovers taken to provide for her children. It follows Ned to prison, and out again as a strapping young man with a talent for boxing, his "apprenticeship" to a notorious bushranger, and his own adventures in legal and illegal trades. And finally we begin to get some answers to the question set up in the very beginning of the book: why did Ned's father have women's clothes in his possession?
As much as the book is the story of a journey to manhood for a young, troubled and injured boy, it is also something of a tour guide of Victoria and New South Wales for the non-native. A helpful map begins the book, and as Ned and his friends (and enemies) run from one town, river, mountain or "selection" (land acquired for farming) to another, I found myself turning to the map frequently to get my bearings, and developing a sense of the landscape from swollen rivers and creeks, to dusty, dry towns and scrubland, to the cold high mountains that contain the scene of action.
And throughout, Carey does a masterful job of maintaining a certain amount of suspense: will Ned manage to go straight? Does he really want the life of a criminal or has he fallen into it out of desperation and despair? Aren't there signs that he maintains the instincts of the young boy who butchers a cow to spare his mother and siblings from hunger - that he could be a good husband and father? Ned, though in reality, apparently, a much more decidedly "bad" actor than in the story, is portrayed in this novel as a layered, convincing, and fascinating character.
And, by the way, if you have seen the film version - masterful if violent piece - don't think that you know the material. The book is an entirely different story.
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