Gibson's Book Club reads True History of the Kelly Gang
Monday, July 2, 2012, at 7 PM
Here's a wild card, a Booker winner from 10 years ago, but certainly one of those classics I never got around to: The True History of the Kelly Gang, by Peter Carey.
In True History of the Kelly Gang,
the legendary Ned Kelly speaks for himself, scribbling his narrative on
errant scraps of paper in semiliterate but magically descriptive prose
as he flees from the police. To his pursuers, Kelly is nothing but a
monstrous criminal, a thief and a murderer. To his own people, the lowly
class of ordinary Australians, the bushranger is a hero, defying the
authority of the English to direct their lives. Indentured by his
bootlegger mother to a famous horse thief (who was also her lover), Ned
saw his first prison cell at 15 and by the age of 26 had become the most
wanted man in the wild colony of Victoria, taking over whole towns and
defying the law until he was finally captured and hanged. Here is a
classic outlaw tale, made alive by the skill of a great novelist.
We've uploaded the conversation to archive.org, where you can listen to a streaming version or download it. Have a listen through the link, here.
Howard Frank Mosher, a beloved American novelist and winner of the 2011 New England Independent Booksellers Association's President's Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts, returns with a memoir that is both a chronicle of his recent 100-city book tour across America and a reflection on his development as a writer. Mr. Mosher will be at Gibson's Bookstore for a reading and signing on Thursday April 19th, 2012, at 7 p.m. Enjoy this slideshow, from his cross-country trip.
Theme by Danetsoft and Danang Probo Sayekti inspired by Maksimer
