From the most mundane to those elevated moments of achievement, we are constantly bedeviled by, `what is the truth.' Most of this is associated not with what actually happened, rather what we thought happened. Even in this modern age with huge opportunities for communication, there are times when the truth has become vastly corrupted, particularly with journalistic `spin'..So many times in my life I have discovered that certain things I held as factual were actually wrong.

Thus, Peter Carey, what gives you the divine right to endow your writings as `the truth' about the Kelly gang? This is simply presumptuous, albeit it grabs our attention - and that's what sells books.

One would have to be a bit of a simpleton to accept this documentation as even mildly authentic to Ned Kelly's so called 13 writings. Right, it might well be in a speaking style that Ned would have used - bit it's all so poetic - it's Carey reinventing himself as Ned Kelly.

Despite my reservations, I have found the whole process sufficiently interesting to look up the reviews.

I guess as Australia's greatest rebel, Ned Kelly and his gang deserve the final plaudits in this strange tale . In brief, its simply an imaginative and unorthodox recreation of a myth.