Ned Kelly

Are you familiar with this name?

Our book club read the Booker Prize-winning The True History of the Kelly Gang. It's a novel, based on the life of a cherished Australian folk hero-bandit. The book is written in the style of the real Ned Kelly's final written statement, some 9,000 words listing the grievances suffered by him and his Irish-immigrant family at the hands of the so-called "law."

This letter (and therefore the book) doesn't make use of a single comma, and sentences which are about the same topic or emotion are strung together into long run-on sentences. As a literary device, it's compelling, but this is a long book, and the style really slows down the readers. (On a topical note, it surely makes me realize the importance of teaching my students punctuation.)

Also, it's fairly bleak. You know Ned Kelly's fate before the end of the book, and you can see that anyone who doesn't betray him will go down with him, or with one of the horrors attached to poverty. The language is colorful, the setting is absolutely complete, and the story itself is irresistible. But as a book, I could not rate it above a "3" (as you know, "tell a friend") because it's so dang hard to get through.

I'll tell you what, though, it sure makes you want to dig up the TRUE true history, and start finding parallels between Ned Kelly and John Brown, or Robin Hood, or other larger-than-life martyrs.