Parrot & Olivier in America

I'm not sure why I thought I would like this book more than I did.  I have to admit that I'm not a huge fan of the early 1800's Europe as a moment in history, but the look at America as a burgeoning democracy was enticing.  However, the stylized language, as accurate as it may have been, was wearisome and cumbersome.  It was longer than it needed to be.  Character revelations came too late - I already didn't care about them or their motives or histories.  Themes of incarceration, class in democracy, and the male friendship between the two title characters were not well developed.  I was just bored.

The book follows Olivier, the snobbish son of French nobles in post-Revolutionary France, and Parrot, his reluctant English servant, who was originally trained as an engraver.  Olivier is forced to escape to America to avoid a revival of the revolutionary feeling in Paris with Parrot, along with his French mistress and her elderly mother, under the guise of completing a book about the American prison system.  Blah blah blah he has several encounters in the new world, a brush with the law and a failed romance.  Parrot discovers a new life and artistic ability in America and is happy.  Olivier is not. 

Sure, there were some good moments - Peter Carey is clearly an expert even if I didn't care for this novel.  I loved the insect metaphors he peppered throughout: people resembling wasps, silkworms, crickets and butterflies.  I particularly liked his description of a French wine encountered in America:

I bemoaned the palates of the Philadelphians who had called his Medoc cold and sour.  Miraculously, it was free of sediment, and rushed into my glass at that perfect stage of life.  In a year it would be a dowager with a faded old corsage, but as it entered my mouth it was vigorous and manly, completely composed, its orchestra all present and correct.  Oh heavens, that such small things make a man so happy.

Although this glass of wine sounds excellent, the rest of the novel just wasn't for me.

True History of the Kelly Gang

I had the fortune to live in Australia for 6 months, where I first heard the story of Ned Kelly.  While I was in Perth, the movie "Ned Kelly" was released (starring Heath Ledger) and a friend won tickets to the premier from a radio station.   While new to me, my Australian friends had been raised on the story of Ned Kelly, who is often compared to Jesse James or some other romanticized American outlaw.  However, I was never able to connect to the story of the man driven to a life of crime by poverty and injustice, who is only captured after a huge firefight and show of insane bravery - until now.

The voice Peter Carey gives to Ned Kelly as he narrates his life story is at first a bit hard to get into.  Ned's grammar is rough, his sentences run-on and he never uses a comma.  He does however used several mid 19th-century abbreviations: v. for very, cd. for could, and & instead of and.  It took me 10 or 15 pages to begin to feel comfortable with his style.  After that, the style is another reflection of the Australia of Ned Kelly's experience - rough, casual, sometimes even violent.  Adjectivally brilliant.

Ned's first person narration changes only once.  When he describes the first time he left home and became an outlaw, he describes the experiences as that of "the boy."  Marking his moment of transition was very powerful to me - it demonstrated that in many ways his fate was forced upon him, and that his becoming an outlaw was something others did to him.  The only other times the narration shifts is toward and at the end, when the final episodes of the story are relayed in newspaper articles.  I thought this was effective, and in many ways necessary, but I think I would have been happier if the story had ended with Ned's words.

My American edition of the novel praises it as a Great American Novel.  I couldn't disagree more - this novel could not be more Australian (even though it opens with a quote from Faulkner).  Peter Carey's descriptions of Ned Kelly's life experience, language, and even his metaphors are to me as Australian as Steinbeck is American.  For example, Ned's description of himself as a young boy, just before his first arrest:

I were a plump witchetty grub beneath the bark not knowing that the kookaburra exists unable to imagine that fierce beak or the punishment in that wild and angry eye

Ned speaks of an Australian spirit hardened by the knowledge of "unfairness" from an early age.  The injustice inherent in the country's birth was so raw and real, and I finally understood what makes Ned Kelly a hero:

And here is the thing about them men they was Australians they knew full well the terror of the unyielding law the historic memory of UNFAIRNESS were in their blood and a man might be a bank clerk or an overseer he might never have been lagged for nothing but he still knew in his heart what it were to be forced to wear the white hood in prison he knew what it were like to be lashed for looking a warder in the eye and even a posh fellow like the Moth  had breathed that air so the knowledge of unfairness were deep in his bone and marrow.