Maori myth, culture, and language are constant themes in The Bone People, but Hulme is done in by her success her tale is so universal in its beauty that it passes by the uniqueness of New Zealand on its way to higher literary heights. Where Hulme is less successful is in her attempt to use the story as a metaphor for the current fate of New Zealand and the Maori people. These three characters, and the way their love for each other develops, describe the limits of the story but the author's concern for the characters' emotional life, as shown through the use of multiple point-of-view and stream-of-consciousness, is so obsessive in its purity that the reader doesn't miss the lack of a depiction of a real social context in this admittedly long (440 pages) novel. Keri Hulme’s The Bone People tells the story of Kerewin’s unexpected contact with Joe and his adopted son, Simon. Keri Hulme recalls the events of quarter of a century ago for. S o, the first thing is the protagonist’s name: Kerewin Holmes is similar to the author’s own name and, one suspects, the character is her surrogate in the story. The boy's foster father, a rough-hewn Maori widower, is alternately protective and physically abusive of the boy. It’s 25 years tomorrow since The Bone People almost certainly the best selling New Zealand novel ever written was published.

Hulme's story is simple, perhaps shockingly plain, yet almost bottomless in its emotional depth, A reclusive Maori woman (a somewhat autobiographical figure), bitter at the world yet ironically made wealthy by a lottery, has her steely exterior pierced by an orphaned, psycologically-disturbed boy who, though of normal intelligence, refuses to speak for some mysterious reason in his past. 'This startling first novel by a 38-year-old Maori woman from New Zealand has already won the New Zealand Book Award, England's Booker Prize for fiction, and Mobil Corporation's Pegasus Prize for foreign literature-plus extravagant praise from the critics.

The bone people book review