Peter Carey (1) (1943–)
Author of True History of the Kelly Gang
For other authors named Peter Carey, see the disambiguation page.
About the Author
Peter Carey was born on May 7, 1943 in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, Australia. His first two books, The Fat Man in History (1974) and War Crimes (1979), were short story collections. His first novel, Bliss, was published in 1982. At the time he was balancing his writing career with the operation of an show more advertising agency in Sydney, and his books were not generally known outside of Australia. He began to receive international attention when Illywhacker was published in 1985. He won the Booker Prize in 1988 for Oscar and Lucinda and in 2001 for True History of the Kelly Gang. His other works include The Tax Inspector, Parrot and Olivier in America, and The Chemistry of Tears. He also won the Miles Franklin Award three times. In 2015 he made the Australian Book Designers Association Award shortlist for his title Amnesia. This title also made the 2015 Prime Minister's Literary Awards shortlist. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: Peter Carey on 2014
Works by Peter Carey
Oscar and Lucinda, True History of the Kelly Gang: Introduction by Paul Giles (Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics Series) (2019) 51 copies, 2 reviews
The Chance 4 copies
Thirteen moons 1 copy
Peeling [short story] 1 copy
Close to the Sun 1 copy
Joe (in Collected Stories) 1 copy
Conversations with Unicorns 1 copy
Associated Works
The Art of the Story: An International Anthology of Contemporary Short Stories (1999) — Contributor — 394 copies, 5 reviews
Know the Past, Find the Future: The New York Public Library at 100 (2011) — Contributor — 132 copies, 4 reviews
A World of Difference: An Anthology of Short Stories from Five Continents (2008) — Contributor — 110 copies, 1 review
Australian Literature: An Anthology of Writing from the Land Down Under (1993) — Contributor — 29 copies, 1 review
Oscar and Lucinda [1997 film] — Original book — 27 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Legal name
- Carey, Peter Philip
- Birthdate
- 1943-05-07
- Gender
- male
- Education
- Geelong Grammar School
Monash University - Occupations
- short story writer
novelist
advertising copywriter
creative writing teacher (New York University)
writing instructor (Princeton University)
director of MFA program (Hunter College) - Organizations
- American Academy of Arts and Letters (2016)
Order of Australia - Awards and honors
- Royal Society of Literature (Fellow, 1989)
Australian Academy of Humanities (Fellow)
American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Fellow) - Agent
- Amanda Urban (ICM)
- Short biography
- Peter Carey is an Australian novelist. Carey has won the Miles Franklin Award three times and is frequently named as Australia's next contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Carey won his first Booker Prize in 1988 for Oscar and Lucinda, and won for the second time in 2001 with True History of the Kelly Gang. In May 2008 he was nominated for the Best of the Booker Prize. In addition to writing fiction, he collaborated on the screenplay of the film Until the End of the World with Wim Wenders and is executive director of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program at Hunter College, part of the City University of New York.
- Nationality
- Australia
- Birthplace
- Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, Australia
- Places of residence
- Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, Australia
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Queensland, Australia
London, Middlesex, England, UK
New York, New York, USA (show all 7)
Bellingen, New South Wales, Australia - Associated Place (for map)
- Australia
Members
Discussions
November 2015: Peter Carey in Monthly Author Reads (January 2022)
Peter Carey's "Wrong About Japan" in Japanese Culture (February 2010)
Reviews
Peter Carey has woven together the stories of four main characters and given them a psychological depth that makes them interesting and unpredictable. Taking inspiration from the life of Charles Dickens and from his style makes this novel more intriguing for readers like me who are interested in the writing process.
The Dickensian aspect comes first from the setting in Victorian London, a mix of middle-class privilege and underworld struggle. Like Dickens, Carey gives vivid detail that fits show more into recognizable streets of London. Carey has the sordid details of life for those without money and their various dodges to survive. Unlike Dickens, he does not romanticize. The life of young Oliver Twist and his companions are a charming picture compared to the reality of child exploitation and prostitution that Carey shows. Dickens’ readers would likely have rejected the harsh conditions and venal characters that Carey depicts – and we’d reject Dickens’ sentimentality and cartoonishness in a modern novel.
Like Dickens, Carey draws a whole series of interesting characters, although he gives them a psychology that is much more complex than Dickens does. And there are few characters here who are motivated by morality and generosity. Even relatively minor characters like Carpenter the footman, who initially seem cartoonish, turn out to have a complex history and psychology, although some, such as Henry Phipps, are not entirely convincing. The characters who are explored in more depth are fascinating and human in a way that Dickens seldom achieves. Jack’s pain and his obsession make him sympathetic even in his extremity and cruelty. Mercy’s need for security comes from a past that gave her choices we would not want to face.
Carey’s writing style is a leap from the nineteenth-century novel. It’s brisk and takes little time to set a scene or ramble through atmospheric landscape. Carey gives just enough detail to imagine the scene and moves to the action. Modern readers don’t like to take the time that would have been available to readers before entertainment options multiplied. The rapid changes of perspective with little pause for transitions would also have been less popular with earlier readers. But it keeps the modern reader going through the plot twists of the unfolding story, even while it leaves out the reflective pace that I often enjoy in nineteenth-century writers.
A special pleasure in this novel is the way that Carey parallels the actual life of Charles Dickens in the character of Toby Oates. His rise from poverty through his journalism to becoming a rising star as a writer and as an entertaining storyteller make Oates’ character an imaginative exploration of Dickens’ early life. It’s fascinating to see how Oates develops an early news report, and then chapters of his book. I can imagine how Dickens might have come across arresting characters in his travels and then created their background and motivations and built them out into a whole story. Carey gives this a modern critical perspective: Toby finds the details that make a journalistic story engaging, but later he is shocked when Jack rejects his portrayal of Jack’s life. The final pages offer a very contemporary reaction to the media.
I don’t imagine, though, that Dickens needed mesmerism to get into his characters’ heads. Carey’s use of mesmerism seems a colourful nineteenth-century detail, but a bit unnecessary. He gets into his other characters’ heads without it, and he lets the mesmerism theme die out without really going anywhere. But it is effective as a plot device to keep Jack tied to Toby long enough for the story to take off on its own. It also highlights the control that Toby’s education and social position give him over Jack, in spite of the threats to his position that Toby faces.
So here is a Dickensian novel about Dickens and his characters but in a modern style with an Australian twist – a totally mesmerizing read. show less
The Dickensian aspect comes first from the setting in Victorian London, a mix of middle-class privilege and underworld struggle. Like Dickens, Carey gives vivid detail that fits show more into recognizable streets of London. Carey has the sordid details of life for those without money and their various dodges to survive. Unlike Dickens, he does not romanticize. The life of young Oliver Twist and his companions are a charming picture compared to the reality of child exploitation and prostitution that Carey shows. Dickens’ readers would likely have rejected the harsh conditions and venal characters that Carey depicts – and we’d reject Dickens’ sentimentality and cartoonishness in a modern novel.
Like Dickens, Carey draws a whole series of interesting characters, although he gives them a psychology that is much more complex than Dickens does. And there are few characters here who are motivated by morality and generosity. Even relatively minor characters like Carpenter the footman, who initially seem cartoonish, turn out to have a complex history and psychology, although some, such as Henry Phipps, are not entirely convincing. The characters who are explored in more depth are fascinating and human in a way that Dickens seldom achieves. Jack’s pain and his obsession make him sympathetic even in his extremity and cruelty. Mercy’s need for security comes from a past that gave her choices we would not want to face.
Carey’s writing style is a leap from the nineteenth-century novel. It’s brisk and takes little time to set a scene or ramble through atmospheric landscape. Carey gives just enough detail to imagine the scene and moves to the action. Modern readers don’t like to take the time that would have been available to readers before entertainment options multiplied. The rapid changes of perspective with little pause for transitions would also have been less popular with earlier readers. But it keeps the modern reader going through the plot twists of the unfolding story, even while it leaves out the reflective pace that I often enjoy in nineteenth-century writers.
A special pleasure in this novel is the way that Carey parallels the actual life of Charles Dickens in the character of Toby Oates. His rise from poverty through his journalism to becoming a rising star as a writer and as an entertaining storyteller make Oates’ character an imaginative exploration of Dickens’ early life. It’s fascinating to see how Oates develops an early news report, and then chapters of his book. I can imagine how Dickens might have come across arresting characters in his travels and then created their background and motivations and built them out into a whole story. Carey gives this a modern critical perspective: Toby finds the details that make a journalistic story engaging, but later he is shocked when Jack rejects his portrayal of Jack’s life. The final pages offer a very contemporary reaction to the media.
I don’t imagine, though, that Dickens needed mesmerism to get into his characters’ heads. Carey’s use of mesmerism seems a colourful nineteenth-century detail, but a bit unnecessary. He gets into his other characters’ heads without it, and he lets the mesmerism theme die out without really going anywhere. But it is effective as a plot device to keep Jack tied to Toby long enough for the story to take off on its own. It also highlights the control that Toby’s education and social position give him over Jack, in spite of the threats to his position that Toby faces.
So here is a Dickensian novel about Dickens and his characters but in a modern style with an Australian twist – a totally mesmerizing read. show less
I found this hiding on an old shelf at my parents' place, and the title intrigued me, along with it being small enough to read on the train to my new job in the big smoke.
It's a truly weird collection, executed fucking fantastically. I won't go into any real detail as each of the pieces is rather short, but they unravel and reveal themselves deliberately.
All I will say, is that if the line "EVERY TIME I FUCK MARIE, I KILL ANOTHER HORSE." Appeals to you, this is the book for you.
It's a truly weird collection, executed fucking fantastically. I won't go into any real detail as each of the pieces is rather short, but they unravel and reveal themselves deliberately.
All I will say, is that if the line "EVERY TIME I FUCK MARIE, I KILL ANOTHER HORSE." Appeals to you, this is the book for you.
Ever since my high school boyfriend outed me to my youthful music idol as a slavering fangirl, I resolved to be moderate in my attitudes towards artists whose work I admire. Not that I want to downplay my enjoyment of their art, or affect a "too cool for enthusiasm" attitude. But I realized that day at the indie-rock festival how wrong it was that I was uncomfortable speaking face-to-face with this personable, modest woman, all because I had elevated her onto an unreasonable pedestal. I was show more unable to relate to her as a person, because my veneration of her got in the way, and I was unable to take myself seriously as a fellow musician, because of my veneration for her art. And that, it seemed to me, was a situation worth avoiding in the future.
All of which is to say: my long-time resolution is being put to a severe test by the novels of Peter Carey.
On the plane back from New Hampshire in October, I was practically hyperventilating over the final pages of Carey's Oscar and Lucinda, having to stop after every chapter and decompress for ten minutes before moving on. On the way back from (appropriately enough) Australia, I devoured the entirety of his My Life as a Fake. And now, having just burned through True History of the Kelly Gang, I have to admit to a certain amount of giddy adulation. Carey's consistent ability to create a strong, vital narrative voice; the sheer creative exuberance of his language; the crippling pathos of his storylines and the way his characters grip your heart and won't let go: reading his work is artistically, mentally and emotionally an utter joy.
One of my favorite qualities in a novel is a narrative voice so distinctive that I carry it around with me in my head while going about my business, and Ned Kelly's is a beautiful example. The language and character development here are intimately linked, in a way much more sophisticated than the over-used equation of "writing in dialect" with "uneducated" and/or "stupid." Kelly's unorthodox grammar and punctuation do point, of course, to his lack of formal education, but his style as a whole does so much more, immersing the reader in a wild, hybrid, semi-Biblical landscape that flexes and reels through the narrative, at times becoming so taut that it approaches poetry, yet never seeming unnatural. From his first sentence, Carey had me:
Even in these scant lines, so much of Kelly is present: his anger and his tenderness, his self-justification and his inescapable ties to past and family. And, of course, his religion, for being poor Irish Catholic "currency" (the nominally free offspring of convicts forcibly settled on Australian soil) is at the heart of Kelly's identity and his actions.
One of the many things I love about Carey's novels is how thought-provoking and ambiguous their morality tends to be. From a self-sacrificing love expressed by a gambling addict as a suicidal bet, to a mysterious manuscript whose ownership is so murky that an obsessed collector is left wandering in a morass of half-truth, his characters operate within moral frameworks that are engaged with tradition, yet strikingly unique. Kelly Gang is somewhat less unexpected in its morality than either Oscar & Lucinda or My Life as a Fake - after all, the rise and inevitable fall of the folk-hero outlaw has a well-established canon behind it, from Robin Hood to Jesse James to Don Vito Corleone - but Carey creates a typically nuanced version of the stock character. Rather than taking to crime to alleviate the suffering of the peasantry, or out of dreams of glory, Kelly is born, like all currency, on the edge of the law, and slides gradually over the line under the pressure of poverty, police harassment and family loyalty. At the same time, he is far from a helpless victim of circumstance. Kelly is passionately engaged with his world and his system of honor; the tragedy lies in the radical difference between his understanding of what is honorable, and the definition held by the colonizing English police.
As an interesting take on the outlaw archetype, I particularly liked the scene in which Kelly resolves to start robbing banks. Railroaded into hiding after a police-killing that was two-thirds self-defence and one-third accident, Kelly comes to the realization that the only thing capable of protecting him and his brother from the police are the poor inhabitants of the bush, and resolves to win their sympathies by stealing from the relatively rich and giving to the dirt poor. This is a much more practical, yet still sympathetic, picture of the thought process leading to the Robin Hood mode of operation, than the standard assumption of selfless outrage on behalf of the peasantry. I liked it, and I liked Kelly. I also liked the way in which Kelly's genuine affection for, and identification with, the poor folks he wins over with his bank proceeds grows over time, until we get a passage like this one, a last celebratory hurrah on the evening he learns he is a father:
The real star of the show here is Kelly's language, and I admired the way Carey escalates the final tragedy by yanking the narrative out of his anti-hero's hands, to be finished by an antagonist - although, in typical Carey fashion, even that antagonism is tinged with ambiguity.
From first to last, a truly excellent novel, exhilarating and lovely. If we ever go together to meet Peter Carey, you can tell him I said so...just please don't tell him I have Ned Kelly posters all over my walls. show less
All of which is to say: my long-time resolution is being put to a severe test by the novels of Peter Carey.
On the plane back from New Hampshire in October, I was practically hyperventilating over the final pages of Carey's Oscar and Lucinda, having to stop after every chapter and decompress for ten minutes before moving on. On the way back from (appropriately enough) Australia, I devoured the entirety of his My Life as a Fake. And now, having just burned through True History of the Kelly Gang, I have to admit to a certain amount of giddy adulation. Carey's consistent ability to create a strong, vital narrative voice; the sheer creative exuberance of his language; the crippling pathos of his storylines and the way his characters grip your heart and won't let go: reading his work is artistically, mentally and emotionally an utter joy.
One of my favorite qualities in a novel is a narrative voice so distinctive that I carry it around with me in my head while going about my business, and Ned Kelly's is a beautiful example. The language and character development here are intimately linked, in a way much more sophisticated than the over-used equation of "writing in dialect" with "uneducated" and/or "stupid." Kelly's unorthodox grammar and punctuation do point, of course, to his lack of formal education, but his style as a whole does so much more, immersing the reader in a wild, hybrid, semi-Biblical landscape that flexes and reels through the narrative, at times becoming so taut that it approaches poetry, yet never seeming unnatural. From his first sentence, Carey had me:
I lost my own father at 12 yr. of age and know what it is to be raised on lies and silences my dear daughter you are presently too young to understand a word I write but this history is for you and will contain no single lie may I burn in Hell if I speak false.
Even in these scant lines, so much of Kelly is present: his anger and his tenderness, his self-justification and his inescapable ties to past and family. And, of course, his religion, for being poor Irish Catholic "currency" (the nominally free offspring of convicts forcibly settled on Australian soil) is at the heart of Kelly's identity and his actions.
One of the many things I love about Carey's novels is how thought-provoking and ambiguous their morality tends to be. From a self-sacrificing love expressed by a gambling addict as a suicidal bet, to a mysterious manuscript whose ownership is so murky that an obsessed collector is left wandering in a morass of half-truth, his characters operate within moral frameworks that are engaged with tradition, yet strikingly unique. Kelly Gang is somewhat less unexpected in its morality than either Oscar & Lucinda or My Life as a Fake - after all, the rise and inevitable fall of the folk-hero outlaw has a well-established canon behind it, from Robin Hood to Jesse James to Don Vito Corleone - but Carey creates a typically nuanced version of the stock character. Rather than taking to crime to alleviate the suffering of the peasantry, or out of dreams of glory, Kelly is born, like all currency, on the edge of the law, and slides gradually over the line under the pressure of poverty, police harassment and family loyalty. At the same time, he is far from a helpless victim of circumstance. Kelly is passionately engaged with his world and his system of honor; the tragedy lies in the radical difference between his understanding of what is honorable, and the definition held by the colonizing English police.
As an interesting take on the outlaw archetype, I particularly liked the scene in which Kelly resolves to start robbing banks. Railroaded into hiding after a police-killing that was two-thirds self-defence and one-third accident, Kelly comes to the realization that the only thing capable of protecting him and his brother from the police are the poor inhabitants of the bush, and resolves to win their sympathies by stealing from the relatively rich and giving to the dirt poor. This is a much more practical, yet still sympathetic, picture of the thought process leading to the Robin Hood mode of operation, than the standard assumption of selfless outrage on behalf of the peasantry. I liked it, and I liked Kelly. I also liked the way in which Kelly's genuine affection for, and identification with, the poor folks he wins over with his bank proceeds grows over time, until we get a passage like this one, a last celebratory hurrah on the evening he learns he is a father:
These was your own people girl I mean the good people of Greta & Moyhu & Euroa & Benalla who come drifting down the track all through the morn & afternoon & night. How was they told of your birth did the bush telegraph alert them I do not know only that they come the men the women with babies at their breast shivering kiddies with cotton coats their eyes slitted against the wind. They arrived in broken cart & drays they was of that type THE BENALLA ENSIGN named the most frightful class of people they couldnt afford to leave their cows & pigs but they done so because we was them and they was us and we had showed the world what convict blood could do. We proved there were no taint we was of true bone blood and beauty born.
Through the dusk & icy starbright night them visitors continued to rise from the earth like winter oats their cold faces was soon pressed through doorway and window and even when the grog wore out they wd. not leave they come to touch my sleeve or clap my back they hitched great logs to their horses' tails to drag them out beside the track. 6 fires these was your birthday candles shining in 200 eyes.
The real star of the show here is Kelly's language, and I admired the way Carey escalates the final tragedy by yanking the narrative out of his anti-hero's hands, to be finished by an antagonist - although, in typical Carey fashion, even that antagonism is tinged with ambiguity.
From first to last, a truly excellent novel, exhilarating and lovely. If we ever go together to meet Peter Carey, you can tell him I said so...just please don't tell him I have Ned Kelly posters all over my walls. show less
I didn't actually read this movie tie-in version. The text is the same, obviously, but my paperback has an old print of the Crystal Palace on the cover, all undergraduate intro to architecture -style.
This is one of my favorite books EVAR. It's weird, gothic, grotesque, delicate, intricate, brilliant (wonderfully well-written, and also in the sense of evoking light), horrifying, and exhilirating. None of which words mean much by themselves so I'll try and explain better.
I enjoyed the show more juxtaposition of logic, organicism, and irrationality in each of the book's major components: characters' attitudes towards religion; gambling; the conception and realization of the glass church; love in various forms. These three forces (phenomena?) drive the plot as they come together, or into conflict time after time.
Clearly i'm not so good at reviewing books. Just...go read this one. show less
This is one of my favorite books EVAR. It's weird, gothic, grotesque, delicate, intricate, brilliant (wonderfully well-written, and also in the sense of evoking light), horrifying, and exhilirating. None of which words mean much by themselves so I'll try and explain better.
I enjoyed the show more juxtaposition of logic, organicism, and irrationality in each of the book's major components: characters' attitudes towards religion; gambling; the conception and realization of the glass church; love in various forms. These three forces (phenomena?) drive the plot as they come together, or into conflict time after time.
Clearly i'm not so good at reviewing books. Just...go read this one. show less
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Statistics
- Works
- 42
- Also by
- 19
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- Popularity
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- Rating
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