This story is the song of Australia, and it sings its protest in a voice at once crude and delicate, menacing and heart-wrenching. The author gives us Ned Kelly as orphan, as Oedipus, as horse thief, farmer, bushranger, reformer, bank-robber, police-killer and as his country's Robin Hood.

This book is for iiwi!

RELEASE NOTES:

On it's way to someone who gave my son a very nice present!
iiwi, thank you!!!

Dankjewel! Australië en bookerprizewinnaar!

Pff, I made it through.
That sounds like I didn't like it, which is not the case. it's a good book. But because of the way it's construted, it's also a tough read. It's constructed as thirteen parcells, letters written by Ned Kelly to his daughter. It is written in a sort of pauper Australian dialect. This makes it certainly more believeable being letters from Ned Kelly, on the other hand, having learned British English in class, it hard to read.
Most Australians know this story, or parts of it anyway, but I did not. Therefore I did not have the knowledge escape to make it a bit easier. And last, because its a 'letternovel' (for the Dutch: I've no idea what the good translation of brievenroman is in English) there is no dialogue, something that makes a novel easier readable.
Having said that it is a nice inroduction into the hard world of early Australia.
Parts of this book I read on vacation in Italy, meeting a couple of persons out of Australia thinking I was Australian because I read Ausie history (not having heard me speak, as I don't have an Australian accent I think), which ended in nice discussions consuming bottles of red wine, the drinking mostly on there part by the way :). It seems that Ned Kelly still is a controversial (sp?) figure in Australia.
I tried to read the website about Ned Kelly after finishing the novel, but stopped when was mentioned they had trouble with the remarks on transvestism in te novel. Those troubles bother me again.

What a surprise! All of a sudden I found this book of my wishlist in my mailbox! Thank you ever so much, iiwi!

I read this book at the end of August/beginning of September 2008. Due to unforeseen circumstances I haven't been able to write my journal entry before now. I did write my thoughts about this book down on paper, though, so here they are:

If Peter Carey is to be believed, Ned Kelly was actually a very nice guy who loved his mother and his siblings very much. He was driven to do the things he did out of poverty, discrimination, a corrupt police force and a smear campaign in the media. I am not familiar enough with Australian history to know if this view on things could be true. The form Peter Carey chose to write his story in, i.e. a long letter to the daughter Ned Kelly has never seen, makes that the story has a very authentic feel to it. It doesnot make it easy to read, though, as Ned Kelly doesnot know the first thing about grammar or punctuation, making the sentences quite confusing. Surprisingly, his spelling isnot too bad. Halfway through the book I sort of lost interest. I knew from page one that there was going to be a huge shoot-out at the end resulting in Ned Kelly's death, so no surprises there and this together with the troublesome writing style made it a struggle to read through till the end. Quite frankly, I am not sure I understand why this book won the Booker Prize.

Thanks again to iiwi who was so nice to send me this book as a surprise.

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

For Griete to fulfil a wish from her wishlist.

It arrived this week, many thanks!