Peter Carey’s Ned Kelly is an “adjectival” victim of circumstance.
Poorly educated he nevertheless attempts to set down the true version of events for his daughter, so that she will understand that he is not the monster the police accuse him of being.
Life is cruel, under the rule of the Colonial English but under the tutorage of the notorious bushranger Harry Power, Ned learns the secrets of the valleys and ranges which sets him in good stead when he finds himself the leader of the so called ‘Kelly Gang’.
Ned is torn between his commitments to his brother and friends who make up the gang, his pregnant girlfriend, and justice for his wrongly imprisoned mother.
This was wonderfully written, funny without being ridiculous, and no punctuation in the narration except for full stops accentuates Ned’s lack of education,
The final climatic showdown was written as a newspaper report and ends with Ned’s execution.
I had never read anything on Ned Kelly before and this has inspired me to find out more about him, not to mention the fact it has put me on the path to reading Lorna Doone by RD Blackmore.*
No comments:
Post a Comment