Rating: 
Summary: new beginnings
Review: To me, The Bone People is about new beginnings. It is not about resolution as much as it is about revolution. Some may consider unrealistic the fact that the trio gets back together. I do not. The author has created a completely different type of relationship, much different from the traditional family. I think the characters achieve this elevated level of relationship/communication through both internal and external exploration as the novel progresses. While the past cannot be forgotten, neither can the future. Their relationships emphasis on progressiveness characterizes their ability to adapt. This not only has profound implications for the charters, but also for the Maori culture. Although it's people have been exploited and disowned, as the kaumatua says, there is still a chance for new beginnings. I think in many society's people forget change, only focusing on the depressing situation they are in. The ability to accept a new beginning is a healthy attribute for any person or culture.
Rating: 
Summary: Of Course They Died
Review: When I finished The Bone People I felt let down by the last third of the book, as other reviewers have mentioned. Why drag out stock mystical characters (the waiting old man, the wise healer woman) to create an artificial redemption? But when I heard the interpretation that the three main characters, Kerewin, Simon, and Joe, all died, suddenly all the pieces snapped into place and the end of the book became just as richly satisfying as the beginning. Joe and Kerewin both say they're taking the road home. Simon feels the hands "take him again." If these are seen as the moments of their deaths, then the final chapter, a sort of family reunion scene with all the old and infirm and damaged people introduced earlier in the book, makes sense as well. In chapter 7, Joe asks Kerewin what she wants "most of all" for the future. She answers, "I'd like to have a family reunion, reconciliation. Talk, drink, laugh, sing. . . what you fellas were doing, with no recriminations on either side." Joe wishes for "Himi and me to be happy," and "a good big family group." At the last, they both get their wish, as does Simon. If it's the afterlife, they're welcome to it, with no bad feelings on the part of the reader who thinks Joe should suffer more for his crime, or that, in reality, too much irreparable damage had been done for them all to be together again.
Rating: 
Summary: An editor's nightmare
Review: The Bone People, unfortunately, is not very well written. The "poetry" seems to consist of run-on sentences and a somewhat pretentious neo-primtivism. For example, the main character (Kerewin Holmes) calls a solar engine (a nice phrase in itself) a "sun-eater". It should also be obvious that Kerewin Holmes is a pretty thin disguise for Keri Hulme--adding another level to the pretentiousness of the book. Indeed, when it comes to the solar engine, Kerewin pretends not to have heard of its invention, pretends, oh, it's just a little something I concocted to amuse myself. There are lots of eye-rollers and similar moments of faux modesty --almost enough in themselves to make you want to put the book down. Add to this the utter lack of structure, the self-absorbed style, the lack of character development, the absence of a discernible plot and the only mystery left is how this book won a prize. Well, no, I have to take that back; in an age of political corectness, this book explores child abuse among a native people (the Maori) and there you have your basis for a prize. Nonetheless, it is the work of an amateur--albeit one with potential--but why an editor didn't insist on some structuring, development and and a lot of well-placed cuts is beyond me. ...
Rating:
Summary: Am I the only one who thinks the three main characters died?
Review: I think that Ms. Hulme thoroughly understands child abuse and through her writing has put us in touch with the essence of this horrific issue. We grow to love and care for each of the three main characters and gain more than a glimpse into their complex lives and behaviors. Her condemnation of child abuse surfaces in bringing about the demise of the three characters, all victims and perpetrators of their final destruction. Then I think Ms. Hulme gives us what we want, a happy ending. The novel becomes a magical fairytale in the final happy-ever-after reunion. Reality could never, ever, bring about this ending in real life. The disease is too deep and hope surfaces only in the form of what we would wish reality to be. None of the reviews support my belief that the three characters died and the ending was a necessary fairy tale to survive our journey into child abuse. This was truly an amazing book...hard to read in style at times, in content at times and overall hard to put down. I will probably read it again when I get over being rocked to my core.
Rating:
Summary: I have read this book at least once a year for the last 8.
Review: The Bone People is an extraordinary travel through the worlds of several incredible people. Much of the criticism the book has recieved has to do with its subject matter; all the characters are alcoholics and child abuse is one of the main foci of the plot. Friends of mine who come from severely alcoholic or abusive families have disliked this book intensely, and some have been unable to finish it. But subject matter is not the sum of a book's content. Several things redeem the novel, not least of which is Hulme's glowing twisty magical prose. Unlike many novels which address abuse or alcoholism, this one avoids unremitting bleakness or sanctimonious condemnation, focusing rather on the humanity and confusion and love of the three characters. It is, admittedly, disturbing and dark. However, it is also uplifting and hopeful. There is no "happy ending" as such, but there is no final catastrophe, either. The spirals in The Bone People are coils of family and fate and unity rather than downward spirals into private hells.
Rating:
Summary: An unorthodox, provocative, and wonderful piece of writing
Review: Winner of the Booker in 1985, The Bone People is a novel about a reclusive woman living on the coast of New Zealand. Her life-changing experience begins when a young blond child appears with his Maori foster father. Written in a lyrical style that captures the music of the language in sudden bursts of interior thought, poetry, and tastes of Maori language, this book, if you let it, will carry you away. Before the appearance of this magical but disturbing child (who is mute), the woman, an unhappy and frustrated artist, has been sitting in a tower drinking away her misery. The child has a way of turning everything in his path upside down in terms of meaning. In The Bone People, author Hulme poses a number of intense questions. Everyone may not like the answers.
Rating:
Summary: We are all Bone People...
Review: Ms. Hulme...Kia ora. Your story has reached many people, many places. For me, heartwrenching and ecstatic. I felt the pain. I understood. Thank you for your wonderful story. I spent four months in Whakatane as a locum in 2001. The experience: lifechanging. I will return in two years. Your story brought me back in mind and spirit. To your beautiful country, your wiseland. My sense of art is visual, and if done properly, a filmstory might be born. Opinion?
Rating:
Summary: A Major work of Art
Review: This extraordinary psychological study and excursion into the deep and sometimes surreal recesses of New Zealands Maori culture, took Hulme ten years to write, and justifiably won the Booker. Hulme invests the book with her own wholly original style and lexicon, and achieves an aura of deep, exotic mystery against a bleak yet engaging interpersonal narrative, while working both the maori and english languages in new and startling ways. From New Zealand's rugged and inaccessible west coast, she crafts a multilayered fable about a location few people have ever been, and achieves a wholly unique time, place and sensibility. A major work of art on many levels, it is fundamentally an experiential masterpiece, leaving you slightly melancholic but profoundly awed.
Rating:
Summary: .
Review: I first read The Bone People eight years ago, when I was 19 and starting my own life. It will always be my favorite book of any kind. It showed me that someone felt the world the same way as I. And I didn't even know that about myself until I was in the middle of this book. It made me want to become a writer, the only bad part being I always measure myself against this book and others like it.
It will make many other novels you would have liked in the past seem drab and convoluted.
Enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful & Moving
Review: Bone People is a deeply moving, difficult and disturbing book. Keri Hulme manages to find a langauge which does justice to it's subject matter, the New Zealand landscape and Maori culture from which it draws inspiration. Anyone expecting a literal politically correct narative is likely to be disapointed. However if your willing to immerse yourself in it, it is an immensely rewarding read. Wouldn't normally comment on other reviews, but i couldn't let this one go.
Anyone who flicks through all these reviews and gets to 'A reader from the west coast' shouldn't be mislead by there attacks on the book, especially in respect to it's winning the Booker prize.
Far from being the decision of one rich man, and as meaningful as any of us setting up our own literary prize, the Booker is the most significant literary prize awarded in English speaking countries, excluding the USA. It is easily the equivalent of the Pulitzer, and even a casual glance at the writers and titles that have won the award over the years would indicate it's standing in the literary world.
|
