The Bone People. - Rambling Readers

Paperback, 450 pages

English language

Published Feb. 3, 1986 by Penguin (Non-Classics).

ISBN:: 978-0-14-008922-6

(1 review)

In a tower on the New Zealand sea lives Kerewin Holmes, part Maori, part European, an artist estranged from her art, a woman in exile from her family. One night her solitude is disrupted by a visitor-a speechless, mercurial boy named Simon, who tries to steal from her and then repays her with his most precious possession. As Kerewin succumbs to Simon\'s feral charm, she also falls under the spell of his Maori foster father Joe, who rescued the boy from a shipwreck and now treats him with an unsettling mixture of tenderness and brutality. Out of this unorthodox trinity Keri Hulme has created what is at once a mystery, a love story, and an ambitious exploration of the zone where Maori and European New Zealand meet, clash, and sometimes merge. Winner of both a Booker Prize and Pegasus Prize for Literature, The Bone People is a work of unfettered …

In a tower on the New Zealand sea lives Kerewin Holmes, part Maori, part European, an artist estranged from her art, a woman in exile from her family. One night her solitude is disrupted by a visitor-a speechless, mercurial boy named Simon, who tries to steal from her and then repays her with his most precious possession. As Kerewin succumbs to Simon\'s feral charm, she also falls under the spell of his Maori foster father Joe, who rescued the boy from a shipwreck and now treats him with an unsettling mixture of tenderness and brutality. Out of this unorthodox trinity Keri Hulme has created what is at once a mystery, a love story, and an ambitious exploration of the zone where Maori and European New Zealand meet, clash, and sometimes merge. Winner of both a Booker Prize and Pegasus Prize for Literature, The Bone People is a work of unfettered wordplay and mesmerizing emotional complexity.

10 editions

crabbygirl reviewed The Bone People. by Keri Hulme

Review of 'The bone people' on 'Goodreads'

1 star

what an odd duck of a book - no grammar or spelling rules, stream-of-conscious rants, deeply flawed people and mystical turn of events.
but nope, I didn't like it. in fact, I only finished it b/c it was my choice for bookclub.
there's no much to cringe at: a young kid smoking, a drunk and abusive father, dead bunnies, dreams of rivers flowing from vaginas..... I get that I am reacting in a 'western' way and, consequently, judging another's culture but I can't help who I am, even if what I am is a colonial master.
one thing I did appreciate was the delicate dance back and forth of Kerewin discovering the child abuse, her trying to rectify it with what she's seen of the relationship, and her simmering anger. the abuse/violence is viewed from all 3 main characters and their reflections take a significant portion of the novel. it …

what an odd duck of a book - no grammar or spelling rules, stream-of-conscious rants, deeply flawed people and mystical turn of events.
but nope, I didn't like it. in fact, I only finished it b/c it was my choice for bookclub.
there's no much to cringe at: a young kid smoking, a drunk and abusive father, dead bunnies, dreams of rivers flowing from vaginas..... I get that I am reacting in a 'western' way and, consequently, judging another's culture but I can't help who I am, even if what I am is a colonial master.
one thing I did appreciate was the delicate dance back and forth of Kerewin discovering the child abuse, her trying to rectify it with what she's seen of the relationship, and her simmering anger. the abuse/violence is viewed from all 3 main characters and their reflections take a significant portion of the novel. it shapes them and defines the story.

Subjects

Maori (New Zealand people) -- Fiction