“Lean, pared down for speed, and wholly convincing not only as an outback adventure but also as a psychological and historical drama…A spectacular feat of imagination.”
—Boston Globe
“Kelly’s voice in Carey’s hands, becomes hypnotic. The lilts and dips of the voice carry everything from pity to poignancy, from rage to defiance, in a strange poetic simplicity.”
—Matt Condon Sun-Herald, (Australia)
“Vastly entertaining…. Triumphantly eclectic, as if Huck Finn and Shakespeare had joined forces to prettify the legend of Jesse James.”
—The New York Times
“The ingenuity, empathy, and poetic ear that the novelist brings to his feat of imposture cannot be rated too high.”
—John Updike, The New Yorker
“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.”
—James Bradley, The Bulletin
“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.”
—Kent Haruf.
“Carey succeeds in creating an account that not only feels authentic but also passes as a serious novel and solid, old-fashioned ‘entertainment.’ A big, meaty novel, blending Dickens and Cormac McCarthy with a distinctly Australian strain of melancholy.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“A bravura performance…. Rewards the persistent reader with a powerful emotional experience.”
—Wall Street Journal
“Carey’s pen writes with an ink that is two parts archaic and one part modern and colors a prose that rocks and cajoles the reader into a certainty that Ned Kelly is fit company not only for Jack Palance and Clint Eastwood but for Thomas Jefferson and perhaps even a bodhisattva.”
—Los Angeles Times
“The power and charm of [this book] arise not from fidelity to facts but rather from the voice Carey invents for Ned Kelly.”
—Time
“So adroit that you never doubt it’s Kelly’s own words you’re reading in the headlong, action-packed story.”
—Newsweek
“The 2001 Booker award winning True History of the Kelly Gang, however, may be said to be Carey’s crowning achievement. A fictionalized autobiography of Australia’s most notorious gangster Ned Kelly, it is a Joycean trip into first person narrative, a coming of age story, and a thundering, adventurous ride. The prose is extraordinary, an almost invented language that is breathlessly hypnotic. The story of Ned Kelly, so strong in the memories of anyone who grew up in Australia, has now been given its true mythological due. Carey has created vivid, beautiful poetry out of dusty legend.”
—Powells.com
“Peter Carey’s Ned Kelly is somebody worth knowing and remembering, and his novel is also worth our best attention.”
—The Washington Post Book World
“In this bracing narrative, Carey has given Kelly back his tongue with a style that rips like a falling tree…Carey is a man who isn’t afraid to stand in water during lightning and tell us what it’s like.”
—Christian Science Monitor
“Brilliantly executed…Carey’s Kelly is filled out in Browningesque depth.”
—The Times Literary Supplement
“Hypnotic …. Prose shot through with poetry and run together in an altogether brilliant way….A roaring challenge of a book that takes readers on a wild, unforgettable ride.”
—The Oregonian
“Epic storytelling, outsized in its sensibilities and as often laugh out-loud funny as it is fraught with tragedy.”
—Miami Herald
“An entrancing chronicle of a larger-than-life folk hero.”
—Denver Post
“Close to letter-perfect.”
—San Diego Union-Tribune
“Carey is a skilled and cunning writer….The tale is packed with action and incident, and has all the garish colors of the outback itself.”
—New York Review of Books
“A marvelous accomplishment, certainly as engrossing as anything Carey has written…He’s created in Kelly and endlessly fascinating character.”
—New York Post
“Packed with incident, alive with comedy and pathos . . . contains pretty much everything you could ask of a novel.”
—The New York Times Book Review