Sorry, you must be a member of this group to do that.

From the Bookshelf of Continent Read-a-thon…

The Bone People

Keri Hulme

Find A Copy At

Libraries

Group Discussions About This Book

No group discussions for this book yet.

What Members Thought

Jul 19, 2019 Terry rated it liked it

Shelves: literary-mainstream

The Bone People, by Keri Hulme.
This Booker-winning novel is about a group of damaged people who find each other, and bond together. It is also about Maori culture and belief, and the intersection between Maori and European based cultures.
Kerewin Holmes, an isolationist painter who plays music but never paints, Simon, a mute boy who arrived from the sea, and who was adopted by the third of this trio, a Maori named Joe.
The benefit of a poet attempting a novel is they are practiced at using languag The Bone People, by Keri Hulme.
This Booker-winning novel is about a group of damaged people who find each other, and bond together. It is also about Maori culture and belief, and the intersection between Maori and European based cultures.
Kerewin Holmes, an isolationist painter who plays music but never paints, Simon, a mute boy who arrived from the sea, and who was adopted by the third of this trio, a Maori named Joe.
The benefit of a poet attempting a novel is they are practiced at using language very precisely and are attuned to nuances of words. For example, Hulme speaks in her prologue of "bluegreen" invoking a feeling of its own colour, whereas "blue-green" suggests a combination of blue and green.
Hulme experiments with language and form in this way. Often these experiments work out very well, but at times they are nonsensical in the context of the story.
Some passages successfully combine mysticism and realism, invoked by original use of language, to create a world which intertwines modernism with Maori culture and myth and legend.
It's a heady combination when it works.
At times, especially in the beginning, the author has poetry, vignettes with no apparent connection to anything, short passages in which the reader has no idea who is speaking or why, flashback, and necessary scenes introducing character and theme. It is a mishmash which can lose the reader.
As good as most of the book is, Hulme could have used a sympathetic editor.
Except for a few worthy passages, the novel really begins about twenty pages in. And it really ends around page 512 in my edition, with The Bone People continuing to page 540.
The combination of reality and myth enriches the novel, but around that page the mysticism takes over the novel, and provides a deus ex machina to jolt the narrative to a new direction. But it doesn't work.
I cannot detail the Maroi cultural elements or pretend to be an expert on those or on the mythical elements. But there are elements that are perhaps universal. The boy Simon is introduced as a creature, an "it". He reminds me of the "changeling" myth, the non human creature put amoungst humans. And Simon behaves much as a changeling does in those tales. Kerewin lives in a tower as many a damsel has lived in many a tower. Even though this one is of her making. I Jungian terms the tower is perhaps her subconscious. Joe reminds me of a sort of Caliban figure, or perhaps a character from Island of Dr Moreau.
As Hulme says, make of this what you will ...more

Like · see review

Dec 27, 2014 Arila marked it as wishlist · review of another edition

Sep 20, 2015 Lena marked it as to-read

Dec 30, 2016 Caro Ray marked it as to-read

Jan 05, 2019 Alicia M marked it as to-read

Jun 20, 2022 Silvia marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Group Home Bookshelf Discussions

Photos Videos

Send invite Members Polls