True History

Not sure why it took me so long to read Peter Carey's novel on The True History of the Kelly Gang. I think I stretched the first fifty pages out for more than a month (partly because I gave priority to John Carey's biography of Golding) and I was still around that stage last Thursday when I settled to a proper reading. In fact, I read most of the book yesterday, despite finding the central section a bit tiresome.

The problem lay in following the intricacies of the story. It gets more than a bit complicated mid-way, and having the whole thing delivered through the uncertainties of Ned's narrative didn't help. Yes, it's a great bit of ventriloquism, and the voice is itself rewarding poetically and in terms of conveying the textures of a way of life, but it's a struggle to make sense of on the simple level of information - and there's an awful lot of that thrown at you.

The pace picks up considerably once Ned becomes an out and out criminal and the gang actually forms, and the last two segments are brilliantly successful. This reader at least found himself cheering the bushranger on in his war against the colonial authorities and genuinely saddened by his losing that war.