The novelist's tricks of invention are limited to three. His life story is narrated chronologically in the first person, with uncanny faithfulness to the facts: from the arrest of Red Kelly (Ned's father) for stealing a heifer in 1865, through young Ned's apprenticeship to Harry Power, bushranger, and his subsequent tangles with the law, on up to the ghastly and well-chronicled scene at the Glenrowan hotel in 1880 when the Kelly gang's plan to derail a train full of policemen is foiled, and Ned in his inhuman armour advances into a hail of bullets, beating his revolver against his breastplate, until his legs are shot from under him. What is there here for a serious novelist to do? Perhaps tackle the story tangentially, perhaps find some unpredictable Rosencrantz-and-Guildenstern slant and use the familiar tale as background? No. A folk hero whose violence has been sanctified - the Australian Robin Hood. Biographies abound and, anyway, he is a character everyone thinks they already know the poor Irish bushranger who stole from banks and gave to the poor, who never harmed women and children, who made himself a suit of armour with a bucket on his head, and shot a lot of policemen.
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