"A spectacular feat of imagination."--
The Boston Globe
"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 "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."--
The 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
"This novel is worth our best attention."--
The Washington Post Book World "An avalanche of a novel.... Cary has raised a national legend to the level of an international myth."--
Christian Science Monitor "Packed with incident, alive with comedy and pathos . . . contains pretty much everything you could ask of a novel." --
The New York Times Book Review
Ned Kelly, the son of Irish immigrants, outlaw, and legendary nineteenth-century Australian folk-hero, describes in his own words how he, his brother, and two friends led authorities on a twenty-month manhunt, marked by widespread populist support, before his capture and execution. By the Booker Prize-winning author of Oscar & Lucinda. Reprint. 75,000 first printing.