The True History of the Kelly Gang – Peter Carey

This was a book that was part of this years NSSFC – from Teachie : )

Amazon reviewer:
This is a riveting story of the struggle of a family to survive in nineteenth-century Australia. It is told by Ned Kelly himself and the language is correspondingly unpolished with very little use of punctuation. After the first chapter or so, however, you stop noticing the language and get involved in the story. This book has been greatly hyped because of the Booker Prize but it’s probably one you should judge for yourself. There’s lots that’s worth reading even if you’re not Australian!

Well I have read this one much sooner than I would have expected because I needed a book to start and read the day before I came home from my Christmas break in Devon. This was a book that was on my wish list because I had issued a challenge to myself to (eventually) read all the booker winners. I have read only two other Peter Carey novel: Oscar and Lucinda which I loved, and Jack Maggs which I wasn’t keen on at all. I was actually surprised I enjoyed this as much as I did. I liked the style of the novel, and thought how well Carey managed to make Ned Kelly a sympathetic character. It highlights brilliantly the struggle people had merely to survive, in what was a hard and unforgiving environment.

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Hotel Du Lac – Anita Brookner

Synopsis
Edith Hope is in disgrace and working out her probation on the shores of Lake Geneva. Friends and family have banished her to seemly Swiss solitude until such times as she recovers her senses. This novel won the Booker Prize in 1985.

A lovely genteel novel. I really warmed to Edith Hope (she has the exact same name as my aunt)and felt her weariness with life and love, and how to get through it. The other occupants of Hotel du Lac, are an interesting bunch, but I was unable to warm to Mr Neville. I have to admit to this being the first Anita Brookner I have read – it won’t be my last.

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Vernon God Little – DBC Pierre BOOKRING – (AliceF)

I signed up for this one because of that idea I have of reading all the booker winners. I wouldn’t have read it otherwise, because I had got it in to my head that I wouldn’t like it – well I was wrong.

Teenager Vernon Gregory Little’s life has been changed by the Columbine-style slaughter of a group of students at his high school. Soon his hole-in-the-wall town is blanketed under a media siege, and Vernon finds himself blamed for the killing (rather than the real culprit, a friend of Vernon’s). Eulalio Ledesma is his particular nemesis, manipulating things so that Vernon becomes the fulcrum for the bizarre and vengeful impulses of the townspeople of Martirio. After a truly surrealistic set of events, Vernon finds himself heading for a fateful assignation in Mexico with the delectable Taylor Figueros (everyone in the book has names as odd as the author’s).

I actually really enjoyed this book. I can see that some people haven’t enjoyed it at all. I did think it was very well written, with an irreverent, but very authentic narrative voice. Vernon Little was for me a character I couldn’t help but like. The last third of the book was certainly unputdownable.

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