I am intrigued by Dee's point that "it was never meant to be a text about historical truth but rather a story about emotional truth, about the experience of being Ned Kelly as Carey imagined it could have been". Those with little historical knowledge might well concur with the New York Times review by Anthony Quinn, that Carey has "turned a distant myth into warm flesh and blood". For this reason I think he has done history – or Ned – few favours. Ned's at least 3 versions of the Fitzpatrick incident).
Unquestionably Carey has presented a tale largely purporting to be true but it is a highly selective version of the truth, one that conflicts in parts even with Ned's own shifting versions of his own story (e.g. Parcel 13 concludes with a section on Ned's execution lifted with only minor changes from the Herald's 1880 report. This may sound harsh, but consider Carey's claim to a factual base in his end of book acknowledgements, listing McQuilton, Dean, McMemony and especially Jones as daily sources of reference when writing.
The errors of historical fact are endless, but the fact that it is written as a novel does not excuse such a wanton treatment of historical facts. I read Carey's novel a while ago but had many problems with its pseudo-historical fiction style.
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