JFDI BOOK #58 TRUE HISTORY OF NED KELLY REVIEW

 

REVIEW BY TOM WELLS
 
True History of the Kelly Gang—Peter Carey won his second Booker Prize in four years for this long,dusty journey through late 19 th C. Australia, a curious choice in any year but especially one that included Ian McEwan’s “Atonement” and David Mitchell’s “number9dream”. It’s not that the book is lacking in considerable merit: excellently written (if annoyingly punctuated); exhaustively researched; and impressively specific. But it’s the last merit that is its chief de-merit, because about two-thirds through the saga the reader begins to suffer from detail overload, as Ned and his gang of well-drawn, highly individual characters do a seemingly endless loop between jail, hideout and Mom’s house. But the
growing feeling of disinterest is nothing compared to the giant letdown of the denouement. Since all but the final chapter is in the form of a diary that Ned has kept for his daughter, it would be tough for him to write about the end of his short, violent days. Still, the authorial decision to change from Ned’s gritty, funny, punchy prose to the formal, wordy, soulless account of a newspaper columnist is the dampest of squibs. After a 500-page ride, the reader deserves better.
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JFDI BOOK #59: REVIEW OF IF ONLY THEY DIDN'T SPEAK ENGLISH

 

 

 

Review by Tom Wells

 

 

If Only They Didn’t Speak English—Jon Sopel has been the BBC’s North American editor since 2014, a stretch that has enabled him to witness up close and personal the most wrenching political transition to the ethos of e pluribus unum since the Civil War. His book tries to make sense of what to fellow Brits must look like wildly contradictory impulses of the American character—the simple willingness to help a neighbor versus the cynical mistrust of government beyond the community; the embrace of free enterprise to the extent it is literally hazardous to one’s health; the pious belief in the power of 21st C. technology to solve most problems and a vaguely worded amendment to an 18th C. Constitution to solve the others. The result is a well-written collection of anecdotes, experiences and observations backed up by cherry-picked incidents and statistics in an effort to be village-green middling. 

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