return to home
 
 
Member Login
Library Login
BookBrowse Mobile facebook      twitter      Bookmark and Share      mail to a friend  Email
 
  This Week's Recommendations    |     Hardcovers Coming Soon    |     Paperbacks Coming Soon    |     Recent Hardcovers    |     Recent Paperbacks
   Genres   |    Settings   |    Time Periods   |    Themes   |    Favorites   |    Award Winners   |    Book Finder   |    Surprise Me!   |    Tag cloud
   Recent Interviews    |     All Interviews    |     Author Bios    |     Author Websites    |     Pronunciation Guide
   Free Newsletters   |    Wordplay   |    Book Giveaway   |    BookBrowse Polls   |    Literary Quotes   |    Personality Quiz   |    Gift Membership
   Recent Membership Magazines    |     Magazine Archives     |     Invite the Author    |     My Reading List    |     First Impressions    |     My Account
   Editor's Blog    |     Best Reader Reviews    |     Book News    |     Meet the Reviewers    |     Stay In Touch
   About Us   |    Tour   |    Member Benefits   |    Join   |    Gift Memberships   |    Library Subscriptions   |    FAQ   |    People Say   |    Contact Us
PLA 2010
Search BookBrowse
Suggested Links
This Book's Themes:
Free Twice-Monthly Newsletters
The Vagrant
The Wild Things

Win This Book!




The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo: Now a Major Motion Picture

Enter To Win Now!


wordplay
Solve this clue:
"T S I Willing B T F I W"

and be entered to win....
New Author
Interviews
Ingrid Law
Ingrid Law talks about the inspiration for Savvy
S.J. Parris
S.J. Parris writes about her inspiration for Heresy, which masterfully blends true events with fiction into a page-turning murder mystery set on the sixteenth-century Oxford University campus.
John Hart
In a letter to his readers, John Hart talks about becoming a writer and the challenges he faced in writing The Last Child.
Adam Haslett
A conversation with Adam Haslett, author of Union Atlantic, a deeply affecting portrait of the modern gilded age, the first decade of the twenty-first century.
No Stars
   Summary and Book Reviews

True History of The Kelly Gang: Summary and book reviews of True History of The Kelly Gang by Peter Carey, plus links to an excerpt from True History of The Kelly Gang and a biography of Peter Carey.

True History of The Kelly Gang True History of The Kelly Gang
by Peter Carey
Hardcover: Jan 2001,
352 pages.
Paperback: Nov 2001,
368 pages.

Publication information
Read an Excerpt
Reading Guide
Reader Reviews

Author Biography
Books by this Author
Critics' Opinion:   very good
Readers' Rating:  3.5 Stars
About BookBrowse Rankings
Buy This Book
Themes Members Only Read-Alikes Members Only Add to Reading List  Members Only
Book Summary

Out of nineteenth-century Australia rides a hero of his people and a man for all nations, in this masterpiece by the Booker Prize-winning author of Oscar and Lucinda and Jack Maggs. Exhilarating, hilarious, panoramic, and immediately engrossing.

This is Ned Kelly's true confession, in his own words and written on the run for an infant daughter he has never seen. To the authorities, this son of dirt-poor Irish immigrants was a born thief and, ultimately, a cold-blooded murderer; to most other Australians, he was a scapegoat and patriot persecuted by "English" landlords and their agents.

With his brothers and two friends, Kelly eluded a massive police manhunt for twenty months, living by his wits and strong heart, supplementing his bushwhacking skills with ingenious bank robberies while enjoying the support of most everyone not in uniform. He declined to flee overseas when he could, bound to win his jailed mother's freedom by any means possible, including his own surrender. In the end, however, she served out her sentence in the same Melbourne prison where, in 1880, her son was hanged.

Still his country's most powerful legend, Ned Kelly is here chiefly a man in full: devoted son, loving husband, fretful father, and loyal friend, now speaking as if from the grave. With this mythic outlaw and the story of his mighty travails and exploits, and with all the force of a classic Western, Peter Carey has breathed life into a historical figure who transcends all borders and embodies tragedy, perseverance, and freedom.

Book Reviews


Good  Publishers Weekly
As genuine as a diamond in the rough . . . No reader will be left unmoved.

Very Good  Library Journal
.... the novel is a tour de force akin to an American Western. Though Kelly may or may not have been the sterling character Carey makes him, his life has been turned into formidable fiction. Highly recommended.

Good  Wall Street Journal - Jaime James
The research is impressively detailed, and Mr. Carey rarely succumbs to the temptation to flaunt it. If you want punctuation and good grammar and a coherent point of view, then go read somebody else's book. But if you want the true history of the Kelly gang, this is it.

Very Good  Time - Michael Fitzgerald
True History of the Kelly Gang offers an energized confabulation of man and myth . . . Carey's most breathtaking feat [and] a fabulous performance.

Very Good  New York Times - Janet Maslin
Writing so convincingly in Ned's argot that his own elegantly phrased acknowledgments at the end of True History of the Kelly Gang seem starkly incongruous, the Booker Prize-winning author of Oscar and Lucinda invests Ned's account with all the makings of a swaggering adventure tale as well as a classic Western tragedy.

Very Good  New York Times Book Review - Anthony Quinn
The form and style of the novel could hardly be more striking . . . Bristling with shafts of wit and poetic grace notes . . . Packed with incident, alive with comedy and pathos, True History of the Kelly Gang contains pretty much everything you could ask of a novel. It is an adjectival wonder.

Good  The Bulletin - Australia
A novel that is by turns rambunctious and tender, teeming with life and incident, and whose plainspoken surfaces conceal a strange and prismatic book, richly imagined, ambivalent and passionate.

Author Blurb  Beverly Lowry
I completely admire Peter Carey's work, the worlds he enters, the stakes he goes for ,and Ned Kelly's a leap even beyond the others brilliantly constructed, gorgeously written, a simply heartbreaking story.

Author Blurb  Kent Haruf
True History of the Kelly Gang is a true wonder. It's lyrical and hard-edged at the same time, constantly inventive, pell-mell in its storytelling, and, best of all, the voice Peter Carey invents for Ned Kelly is nothing less than mint-fresh original. This is just amazing writing.

Write a Review
This Book's Themes:
Read-Alikes:
Other books by this author
Buy This Book:
Addall Logo

Become a Member
Advertisement
Editor's Choice
  •  Mar 20 
  •  Mar 18 
  •  Mar 16 
Making Toast
Roger Rosenblatt
Making Toast Jacket When his daughter, Amy, died suddenly of a heart condition, Roger Rosenblatt and his wife moved in with their son-in-law and their three young grandchildren. His story tells how a family makes the possible out of the impossible.
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
Helen Simonson
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand Jacket You are about to travel to Edgecombe St. Mary, a small village in the English countryside filled with rolling hills, thatched cottages, and a cast of characters both hilariously original and as familiar as the members of your own family.
The Postmistress
Sarah Blake
The Postmistress Jacket The Postmistress is an unforgettable tale of the secrets we must bear, or bury. It is about what happens to love during war­time, when those we cherish leave. And how every story-of love or war-is about looking left when we should have been looking right.
Heresy
S.J. Parris
Heresy Jacket Masterfully blending true events with fiction, this blockbuster historical thriller delivers a page-turning murder mystery set on the sixteenth-century Oxford University campus.
The Swan Thieves
Elizabeth Kostova
The Swan Thieves Jacket Kostova's masterful new novel travels from American cities to the coast of Normandy, from the late 19th century to the late 20th, from young love to last love. The Swan Thieves is a story of obsession, history's losses, and the power of art to preserve human hope.
Wedlock
Recent Reader Reviews
Wesley the Owl by Stacey O'Brien
I read this book in two days and found it so refreshing. Although you will learn a great deal about barn owls by reading it, the book is not just ... read more
The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
I enjoyed reading this book, however, feel that this is not completely her own ideas. This books remembers me of a cross between 'ghost','Sixth ... read more
Shanghai Girls by Lisa See
Lisa See has written a great book! This story is satisfying on many levels, some scenes horrifying, but seemingly truthful, and her handling of the ... read more
RSS RSS feed More...  
Most Viewed This Week
1. Brooklyn Bridge
Karen Hesse
2. Three Cups of Tea
David O. Relin, Greg Mortenson
3. The Glass Castle
Jeannette Walls
4. The Notebook
Nicholas Sparks
5. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
John Boyne
More...
Book Club Recommendations
Shanghai Girls
by Lisa See
Paperback (Feb/10)
Lowboy
by John Wray
Paperback (Feb/10)
Honolulu
by Alan Brennert
Paperback (Feb/10)
When Will There Be Good News?
by Kate Atkinson
Paperback (Jan/10)
More...
First Impressions
Members read and review books often months before they're published. See what they think in First Impressions!
The Queen's Lover
by Vanora Bennett
4.5 Stars            (Mar/10)
Arcadia Falls
by Carol Goodman
Four Stars            (Mar/10)
Still Life
by Melissa Milgrom
3.5 Stars            (Mar/10)
Secret Daughter
by Shilpi Somaya Gowda
4.5 Stars            (Mar/10)
The Girl Who Fell from the Sky
by Heidi W. Durrow
4.5 Stars            (Feb/10)
The Journal Keeper
by Phyllis Theroux
4.5 Stars            (Mar/10)
More...
   Most Recent Blog Entries
Author as Advocate
The Story Behind "The Forty Rules of Love" by Elif Shafak
A Warm Welcome to Major Pettigrew
How Becoming Published Changed My Life (in ways I did not expect)
rss  RSS   rss  subscribe
  Latest BookBrowse News
Amazon 'buy button' rumors abound (Mar 18 2010)
Rumors swirled today that Amazon could revoke the buy buttons for books by Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Penguin, or Hachette if the major publishers can't... Full Story
Amazon's e-pricing threats (Mar 18 2010)
With Apple's iPad launch just weeks away, Amazon raised the stakes again when it threatened to stop directly selling the books of some publishers online... Full Story
rss RSS feed More...
BookBrowse Poll
Q: Did your parents/caregivers read to you regularly as a child? If so, how old were you when they stopped?
Younger than 5 years old
Around 5-7 years old
8-10 years old
11-13 years old
14 years or older
They never or rarely read to me
I don't remember
HOME Submissions | Advertising | Showcase | Library Subscriptions | Media Inquiries | Reviewers | Contact Us |   Email this page to a friend
addall.com - external link
Visit AddAll.com to compare and save at 41 bookstores!
Searching for used books? Search 20,000+ dealers!
 
Compare music prices  |  Compare movie prices
One Percent