The book is firmly set in the captivating land of New Zealand. It centers around three individuals who are broken in their own ways, and their lives become intricately entangled. The story is truly heart-wrenching and disturbing, yet there is an underlying beauty to it that is hard to ignore.

When I first read this book in the late '80s, it had a profound impact on me and haunted me for a long time. I was inexplicably drawn to it, despite the fact that it left me emotionally drained. It is a difficult read, not only because of the heavy content such as child abuse and alcoholism, but also due to the unique writing style. I simply couldn't get it out of my mind.

Almost 10 years later, after having endured a couple of abusive relationships myself, I decided to re-read the book. This time around, I found myself feeling more compassion for the characters. It was as if I could better understand their pain and struggles.

Hmmm...now that another 10 years have passed, I guess it's time for yet another read. I'm curious to see how my perspective might have changed once again.

This is a reread. I read this when I was at university and loved it. Each year, I have looked for Hulme to have written something new, but with no luck.

Hulme has created three extraordinary characters in Kerewin, Joe, and Simon. Each of them has their own complicated past, a tale that is never quite told, but a secret that spreads through everything they do. However, in their love for each other, everything is simple. There just is no one else.

Hulme weaves the relationship into the scenery. The Tower, the sparse Gillaygey house, and the Bachs are all evocative of their relationships at different parts of the novel and in their different forms.

The writing is beautiful. It draws the reader in and makes them feel as if they are a part of the story. The descriptions of the characters and the scenery are so vivid that you can almost see them in front of you. The relationships between the characters are complex and yet so real. It is a book that you can read again and again and still find something new to discover.

One of the most original, difficult, and compelling books I’ve read in a long, long time.

I don't really know how to explain this novel or the spell it cast on me. So, I'll throw out some random tidbits.

An artist and loner named Kerewin Holmes, estranged from her family and resistant to human touch, lives alone in a remote tower near the Tasman sea.

A mute young boy washes up on a New Zealand beach, barely alive after surviving a boat wreck that assumedly kills his parents, with no clues to his identity.

Joe Gillayley, a local factory worker and happily married man, finds the child, names him Simon, and provides him a home with himself and his wife.

These three individual characters - Kerewin, Simon and Joe - become inextricably bound, and this novel is their complex story.

There’s mystery and tension, brutality and gentleness, Maori magic and spirits, despair and hope.

This was a stunning, though often uncomfortable, read for me, and it’s certainly not for everyone (as you can see from the varying GR reviews).

If you decide to read this 1985 Booker and Pegasus Prize winner, my advice is don’t try to make sense of every word - just let some of the unusual free verse and random, alternating narrative wash over you.

This one is going on my keepers shelf (at least for now) to join some other favorites I plan to reread.

It's a book that makes you think, feel, and question. The characters are so vividly drawn that they seem to come alive on the page.

The setting, with its wild and beautiful Tasman sea and the isolated tower, adds to the atmosphere of mystery and solitude.

The story unfolds in a non-linear way, which can be a bit confusing at times, but also adds to the overall charm and uniqueness of the novel.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking for something different and thought-provoking to read.

The Bone People (1983)

Author: Keri Hulme

Read: 12/4/20

Rating: 3.5/5 stars

The Good:

The story is set on the South Island of New Zealand, and it is filled with rich information about the Maori culture and lifestyle, as well as life in a fishing village. The highly descriptive narrative takes readers on a dark yet evocative adventure to Oceania. Hulme's writing is raw and sensual, with a visceral quality. The frequent use of the Maori language adds to the immersive experience, making readers feel like they are part of the story. The themes and ideas in the book are psychologically complex, exploring topics such as violence as a form of love, the consequences of trauma, and the struggle for belonging, identity, and loneliness. The book also touches on controversial topics that make readers think long after they have finished reading, such as morality and culpability. Additionally, it has a touch of magical realism and references to spirituality and the occult, which will appeal to fans of the genre.

The Bad:

The experimental techniques used in the book can be disorienting and make it difficult to fully understand the story. Some of the poetry in the book is beautiful, but there is also a lot that seems incomprehensible and pretentious. The religious connection in the book feels forced and intrusive, and the argument is not clear. There is also a lot that is lost in translation, and some of the material seems deliberately alienating, with its use of Maori vernacular, occult, and even witchcraft. The book contains graphic scenes of violence and darker forays into the human psyche, which may be uncomfortable for some readers. It also takes a questionable moral stance on some issues, such as alcoholism, smoking, and child abuse.

The "Experimental":

The text has a disconnected quality due to the intermittent Maori phrases. Although most can be guessed at through the context, it can still feel jarring. The glossary at the back of the book is not very helpful, as it only includes some words and phrases, and it is not in alphabetical order. The novel is told from three character perspectives, and it can be difficult to tell whose thoughts are being presented at times. Dreams play a significant role in the story, and it can be confusing to distinguish between reality and dreams. There are also several instances of poetry or fragmentary writing, which can be difficult to understand. The use of mysticism, folklore, myths, and legends as a backdrop throughout the narrative, and especially in the third and final part of the novel, can make the book seem gibberish at times.

#TheGoodTheBadThe_Review #adoption #alcoholism #artistlife #asexuality #barasmainsetting #BookerPrize #bothoneandfivestars #beach #bloodyviolent #cannibalism #castle #childabuse #childPOV #Christianity #crime #deathofspouse #dreams #dubiousparentage #fatherson #folklore #fuckedupchildhood #ghost #island #kleptomania #loneliness #magicalrealism #multiplepointsofview #musicperformance #mute #mystery #nature #NewZealand #occult #onaboat #orphan #parenting #PegasusPrize #poetry #religion #streamofconsciousness #storywithinastory #suicide #uniquechaptertitles #weather

I'm finding it extremely challenging to write about this book because I'm well aware that I'll fall short in doing it full justice.

I was utterly absorbed in it, constantly eager to know what would unfold while simultaneously being clueless as to how or why I was so engrossed. The writing is simply stunning, original, unpredictable, and highly interesting. The poetry at the start of the entire novel is gorgeous. The descriptions of meal preparations truly enhance the smells, sights, and sounds of the culture. I don't mind not understanding a significant portion of the novel, both in terms of the language and the dream-like, mythical abstraction of certain sections, because the overall feel of the book is just right.

I love how Hulme offers insights into the characters' individual histories, adding even more depth. (For example, Joe having briefly loved a man! I don't know why that's there or what it's for, just two sentences, but it's great stuff! Perhaps because Kerewin is so androgynous?) On the other hand, I know Hulme is展现ing the complexities and grays of people's characters, but, man, I have to say that I think Joe is forgiven way too easily. I don't care how good he can be to Simon, the monster within him is unacceptable. That, along with how brutally people often speak to Simon, was hard for me to handle. If you love someone, set them free! Meanwhile, Kerewin is so (sorry for the lack of a better word) cool to me (she was my favorite point of view), but I didn't understand why she didn't work harder to stop the violence. In any case, aside from these few gripes, I deeply care about the characters and their development.

However, the book started to lose my full attention as I got closer to the end, and that makes me sad! Not so much because of what actually happens but because of how Hulme had spent hundreds of pages developing each character and event (and it was done so incredibly well!) and then something changed. (If anyone reading this has read the book and can clue me in as to what shifted for me, please comment! It started around the time of the Kaumatua, which was also cool in itself!)

Regardless, I was still astonished by the novel. Keri Hulme is an extraordinary writer. (It's interesting that the main female character's name, Kerewin Holmes, is so similar to that of the author's, hmmmm?)

By the way, I think this phrase/definition helps to understand a little more: E nga iwi o nga iwi = O the bones of the people (where 'bones' stands for ancestors or relations), or, O the people of the bones (i.e. the beginning people, the people who make another people.)

This novel is truly a shining jewel, yet it harbors a significant flaw at its core.

Despite this, it remains an impressive and beautiful piece of work, and an extremely ambitious one at that. It endeavors to create a story that combines the diverse identities of Maori and European, which together form present-day New Zealand. There is a realistic tale of friendship, self-destruction, and child abuse, and there is also a symbolism-rich story of healing, catharsis, and the essential merging of Maori and European civilizations. Each of these aspects is well-told, but unfortunately, they do not seamlessly fit together. This is a problem as they are supposed to be part of the same story. Hulme's writing is brilliant and plays wonderful tricks with light, mostly managing to obscure that flaw, but it cannot make it disappear completely.

The three main characters, Joe, Kerewin, and Simon/Haimona, are respectively Maori, Maori-European, and European. All of them are estranged from their families and cultures and are deeply damaged. In each other, they find both comfort and solace, as well as hurt and pain. As mentioned earlier, child abuse is a crucial element in the novel. It is horrific and yet serves as a necessary trigger for the eventual catharsis that takes place.

When asked if Simon/Haimona is a Christ figure, Keri Hulme, in an interview, stated that she dislikes categorizing him in that way as it might give an approving look to the child abuse that occurs. She further added that she wanted to write about child abuse because it is a problem in New Zealand that is not properly acknowledged.

I can understand this intention. However, we cannot ignore the symbolic, religious elements of the story as they seem to be too carefully thought out and constructed. We have a trinity; we have a child who is "sacrificed" for a greater purpose; we have a father figure named Joseph; we have a mother figure who is a virgin; and we even have a powerful image of the three in one. It is impossible not to see religious symbolism in this. To top it off, the strength of the narrative draws its power from that symbolism.

These elements are not forced. They hold significance in terms of who the characters are and in terms of their narrative arc. But the story of these individuals has a powerful undercurrent that goes against the symbolism of the narrative arc. It is difficult to condemn the abuse on one hand and yet approve the catharsis that follows, but this is what the work requires.

The fact that Hulme manages to fuse this contradiction into a whole is a testament to the strength of her writing. But it is not sufficient. The tension is simply too great, and as a result, we see a crack, a cleavage that remains unhealed. Was this intentional: a symbol on a meta-fictional level of the divide between Maori and European civilizations in New Zealand? If so, it would be overly clever. I would actually prefer that Hulme wanted to tell this story and, in trying, failed to resolve its inherent contradictory forces. Somehow, the passion behind that creative impulse moves me more than the idea of a cold construction of a deliberately flawed work.

[An interesting discussion about the book can be read at The Guardian Books Blog]

Cop out review cause I'm tired but: indescribable. This book is truly something special. It's the best book I've read in a long long time. From the moment I picked it up, I was completely captivated. The story line is engaging and full of twists and turns that keep you on the edge of your seat. The characters are well-developed and you really care about what happens to them. The writing style is beautiful and flows smoothly. It's one of those books that you don't want to put down and when you do, you can't wait to pick it back up again. I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves a good read.

I read this book 10 years ago, and my memories of it were positive.

However, in this second reading, I was greatly disappointed. The storyline of Simon being washed up on a beach after a boat smuggling heroin seemed unnecessary to me.

Kerewin, who was a cartoonish character - rich, friendless, a painter, carpenter, martial arts expert, herbalist, angler, and almost perfect except that she couldn't handle relationships and somehow endured the abuse that Joe inflicted on the 6-year-old Simon.

Then there was Joe, who was loving Simon at one time but then capable of nearly killing the child with brutality.

The book had a mix of western and Maori culture. The story of living with abuse could have been a major theme, but in the end, this overly long book, with some strange dream-like scenes, an inconsistent standard of writing, and two characters that didn't seem real, just didn't appeal to me.

I had expected more from this reread, but unfortunately, it failed to meet my expectations.

If I could award this book half a star, I most definitely would.

It was an absolute torture to read this book, yet I had to do it for college requirements.

The writer seemed to be all over the place, constantly failing to make herself clear.

Her characters were incredibly boring, lacking any sort of depth or personality.

Moreover, the plot was severely lacking, lacking the necessary elements to engage the reader.

I was so relieved when I finally finished this book that I actually threw it across the room in frustration.

This book is a prime example of what not to do when writing a novel, and I would not recommend it to anyone.

It was a gloomy and stormy night. A mute 7-year-old boy, Simon, showed up at the hermit Kerewin’s tower.

The next morning, his adoptive father, Joe, came to pick him up. Since Simon couldn’t explain his motives, Kerewin had to rely on Joe to tell their curious story. Earlier that year, a storm had seen Simon wash up on a beach with no memory or clue of his identity. Joe and his now deceased wife took the troubled boy in, but the traumatized boy was just too hard to cope with.

The Maori people use bones as tools and for art; they believe the notion of a person’s core is found within their skeleton. The bones are a common theme throughout the novel; each character is emotionally stripped to the bone. It is then that we truly see what type of person these characters are. This novel is full of violence and twisted emotions, making it a tense and draining book to read.

Something I really liked about this novel was Keri Hulme’s use of silence as a tool that drives the plot. Simon is unable to speak, but we find out this is more of a psychological rather than a physical restriction, as he can sing. I think he is afraid to say the wrong thing, using it as a defensive strategy. He uses notes as a primary form of communication, this way there are no expressions of his emotion and he can protect himself. The book goes a little further, as Simon is also silent about the pain. When he is beaten, he doesn’t make a sound. Kerewin also uses silence in a similar way. She built her tower to hide away and be a recluse; no one can hurt her if she is in solitude. She is always an artist suffering from a creative silence, not being able to let her creative side flow through her art. You can read this book and find many examples of silences within it; it is very effective and I spent a lot of time trying to work out the meaning behind it.

Each character has been damaged, and their defensive mechanisms make it hard to open up to others. Yet the three main characters spend the entire novel trying to work out what love is and how to find it. They are all isolated from the world; Kerewin in her tower, Simon with his inability to speak, and Joe with his grief. There are just so many themes you could look at in The Bone People, such as the idea of a utopian society uniting Maori and Western culture, post-colonial discourse, cultural illness, violence as a way to communicate, and you can just go on and on.

This is not the easiest book to read; it is confronting and tense. The Bone People left me with mixed emotions. On one hand, the writing was wonderful and left me thinking about so many issues. But on the other hand, the violence just left me with a sick feeling. I often try to leave my emotional opinion of the subject matter out of analyzing a book, but I just can’t help it with this one. In the end, I think the book has something important to say and is worth reading.

This review originally appeared on my blog; http://literary-exploration.com/2013/...

This was an extremely challenging read for me. There are several reasons for this, but mainly it is because this story is truly devastating.

We are thrust into a strange world and narrative that we have to wade through, filled with limericks, soliloquies, mysticism, Maori history (and language), all combined with insanity. There are three main characters who are completely out of their minds. Put all of this together and a fresh and quirky story could potentially be delivered, but that is not what occurred here. Instead, all of this was injected into the very real and horrifying reality of child abuse. Amidst all the weird sidebars and references to New Zealand flora and fauna, there are two people who fall into the gray middle area that life truly is. Joe, in particular, is likable. He is the life of the party, emotional, funny, and caring. Of course, there were times when I found myself longing for the obvious love story. But then it jolts me. He beats his son. Physically, this boy is broken, and emotionally, he is caught up in the abusive cycle, even instigating his own beatings to get to the make-up happy again part.

For entertainment purposes, when I sit down with a book, I have realized that there has come to be an expectation of clear boundaries, protagonists and antagonists, a crisis, and a resolution. Rarely in life are there actually people who can be defined as simply evil or good as they are often portrayed in books and cinema. However, it is relaxing to the mind to get to know a character and file them away in the nice or naughty folders. In real life, child abusers are real people, not just archetypes. And in "The Bone People," a horrifyingly real situation unfolds, and all the reader can do is sit there, aghast and depressed. At times, the garbled/poem-speak would cloud out the events, and I would have to go back and make sure I was understanding correctly. It certainly made the story-telling unique, but in some ways, it disrespected the story that needed to be clearly told for Simon/Haimona/Claire.

I did not like the story arc, nor did I like the ending. I went back and forth, rapidly turning pages one moment and then putting the book down for days (or even weeks) because it was just too overwhelming, too frustrating, too painful, and, frankly, too long.

I also did not like the diluted moral of the story. I mean, when I reached the last page, I felt completely boggled. Am I supposed to feel happy? Relieved? Am I to think that we have a reformed man here, changed by the grace of a gemstone, who is not going to beat his child anymore and will live happily ever after with his not-so-depressed anymore miraculous cancer survivor girlfriend?

I'm going to save the rest of my thoughts for the book club discussion and hopefully put more order to them in the process.

Simón, the boy, one day climbs through the window into the strange house of Kerewin. His calm reaction and the frank and natural treatment he receives surprises and impresses Simón, initiating a strange friendship that will later include Joe, his adoptive father.

Simón is the name that Joe and his pregnant wife gave him when they found him unconscious on the beach, thrown there by the tide. He can hear but not speak. He expresses himself with physical expressions and eventually with a board on which he writes. He is a problematic and talented child, free.

The telephone operator says about Joe: “His father, Joe Guillayley, is a good guy, really, well… he won't come home until late. Guaranteed. If he even gets home, of course.”

Kerewin says about Simón: “I know him well and yet I know so little about him… He is horribly scared of something in his past. I wonder what else he is hiding. Maybe also from Joe. It's possible that more from Joe than from me. I know he has his own form of courage, an ironic sense of humor, an abnormal compassion, a great capacity for love, and yet…”

Kerewin says about herself: “I haven't been violated, I haven't been left stranded or mistreated in any way. There's nothing in my past that explains who I am. But since I can remember, I have an aversion to physical contact… contact with implications, emotional and any type of openly sexual contact.”

The novel revolves around these three peculiar, free characters who live and feel intensely and are always on the verge, with the possibility that something will break that precarious balance and they will explode. Their bonds of affection are put to the test with each outburst. Will they be strong enough to not break their coexistence? For how long?

It is a captivating, intense, and high-quality story, supported by these three characters, which develops in the cold and wild South Island of New Zealand.

The dialogues are peppered with words and phrases in Māori, which are generally understood from the context (there is a glossary at the end, and in some cases, I resorted to the Google translator), as well as with elements of their culture and cosmology (the marae, a construction in honor of the gods, which I also found in Tahiti in the reading of I Am Not Your Eve, appears again).

There is never a situation that could be defined as “normal”: everything is in constant change, moved by the interactions between the characters, until it reaches a thrilling and moving climax at the end of Part III; and followed, as usually happens, by a period of exile in the desert.

For the author, this is the novel of her life, the novel to which she dedicated more than ten years of writing. And it was not in vain.

Although at first it feels like a strange and incomprehensible universe, like a Finn reading García Márquez, with the development of the story, the common humanity weighs more than the particularities and differences.

It is an exceptional novel.