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Summary: Hulme's prose floats off the page like liquid jade.
Review: Hulme's prose floats off the page like liquid jade. The story is about longing for isolation and the needs of humans to come together to form a family. On the most primitave of levels each of the three main characters is by choice or fate isolated--one by a stone tower edifice, another by alcohol and violence, and the third, a child, by physical disability. Hulme captures the violent need we all have in our hearts to belong to a family, even at painful cost. This book is moving, revolting, facinating, and intoxicating all at the same time. The hard part is to recognize yourself in each of the three main dysfunctional characters.
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Summary: magical
Review: Like another reviewer, I have read this book every year for many years. I am drawn to it, inspired by it, moved by it. I've known people who tried it and didn't make it past the first few pages. Others have literally not been able to put it down, mesmerized. Really, magical says it all for me.
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Summary: Awful, don't bother reading it!
Review: This is one of the most awful books I have ever read! I am amazed that it won a prize. This book is so insipid, and so flat; when you compare this book with the passion of say, 'Paula' by Isabel Allende, you wonder what is in this book to win a prize? What I find worst of all is the style of the writer - I appreciate that writers have to come up with styles that will be hailed as new and ground-breaking but this style is pretentious and insipid, to read some reviewers describing it as poetic is just insulting to poets and lovers of poetry!
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Summary: One of the worst books I've ever read
Review: This book totally outraged me! It starts out with Kerewin, an ex artist living in a drunken solitude. A small mute boy Simon and his father Joe come into her life and the spiral of self destruction starts. What annoyed me was the lack of depth in the characters. For instance Kerewin is estranged from her family and longs to be reunited with them. No details are ever given in to what may have happened or how it affects her. Joe is horrifically physically abusing Simon but is portrayed as a good father. Kerewin allows the young child to join her in her drunken binges and on discovering Joe's abuse, although disgusted by it, decides to ignore it and later even encourage it - leaving Simon in a brain damaged comma. When Simon finally awakes he longs for Joe and the social workers are show as insensitive "monsters" at hindering their reunion. This book's message is that alcoholism and child beating are a small mistake all good normal people make and that such behavior certainly shouldn't be held against them. I think it's an outrage that this book won any prize at all and am totally shocked at the other reader's positive reviews.
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Summary: Linked Paradigms in _The Bone People_
Review: Keri Hulme's _The Bone People_ is set in modern day New Zealand where the Maori aboriginal tribes and the European Pakeha live amidst one another. From the outset, the reader notices a traditional genesis, eerily reminiscent of the first book of the Christian Bible. Symbols intertwine themselves within religious icons of Europe and the eccentric beliefs of the Maori people which seems odd at first, then comforting as it continues in an almost Ghandiesque fashion. From the beginning, the reader is presented with an archetypal trinity, later known to be Kerewin, Joen, and Simon. They are "nothing more than people, by themselves" but that "all together they have become the heart and muscles and mind of something perilous and new, something strange and growing and great" (p. 4), which shows the reade quite a bit of Maori traditional beliefs, as well as their own trinity of the Three Fingers: Intellect, Character, and Physique.
Each philosophical ideal presented in this striking novel builds up
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Summary: Strength and Loneliness of Outsiders
Review: The Bone People follows three characters, each of which is an outsider--either by choice or by force of circumstances. Their remoteness from their first worlds gives each of them a strength that enables them to cope with their environment that probably wouldn't be present in a person not tested by being so alone.
The Bone People is the story of how these three outsiders--Kerewin the artist estranged from her family, Joe the Maori whose family has died and who is living a "modern" life, and Simon, the child who cannot speak--slowly let each other in, in fits and starts. None of these characters find it easy to truly let others in, with often violent consequences. A good part of this book's strength is that I identified with characters so strongly, even when their actions were harsh and cruel. In fact, as the story neared a climax, I found myself feeling as culpable as the characters did, simply because they were so real, so human in their strengths and frailties.
The book opens with a series of poems entitled "The End at the Beginning." They put me off as I began reading but I fought through them. By the time I was mid-way through the book, I knew that they were important, but put off reading them until I finished the book. They don't tie up all the loose ends, nor would I want them to, but they were a fitting end (or beginning?) to a magical, wonderful book.
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Summary: A rare treat for the senses
Review: The book had a remarkable effect on me. I still dip into it from time to time, getting drawn in again, reading forwards or even backwards. The first chapters were difficult to comprehend, but irresistible, and each reading makes me more appreciative. This kind of re-reading tells me that this is one of my all-time favourites - a rarity and a necessity in my bedside book collection. One can get drunk on the rich poetic style
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Summary: Disturbing but absolutely gripping
Review: Although it's been several years since I read this book, I still clearly remember the characters and the setting. No other book I've read has drawn me into the characters' minds like this one. If you believe that reading is a way to understand people different from you, you'll appreciate the power of this book. The writing style is unique and takes awhile to get used to, but it communicates the story far better than a conventional style could, so don't be put off - just keep at it. The characters and the settings are so well-conveyed that you feel what they feel and see what they see. I found the violence to be very disturbing, but it couldn't deter me from plowing through the book, or from caring about the abuser(s). It's an amazing book and one of the best I've ever read
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Summary: Timeless and unforgettable
Review: I read this book over 15 years ago. Whenever I'm asked of the one book I'd take with me if I had to choose, "The Bone People" always comes to mind. Over time the particulars of the story have faded, and yet the intense emotions and the vunerability of each character has remained. I remember feeling a bit sad, and yet connected to the characters in an eerie sort of way. Probably, every reader will come away with something different from this masterful novel
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Summary: one of the most magical streams of creativity I've ever read
Review: Hulme writes fluidly, beautifully. She chooses her language with precision, and each word adds to the magic of the story of these three unfortunate people. Kere, Joe and Simon are, for all their faults, characters easily sympathised with, which I think comes from Hulme's empathy as a writer. Each personality is well-developed in itself, and the three come together almost as three aspects of a single person. This makes it easy to relate to all of the characters, and captivating to study their interaction. The best thing about the novel, in my opinion, is its fluidity and spontaneity of narration. My attention was never lost, and I read as much in one sitting as I could. It was also incredible to taste the words Hulme uses, and linger on the poetry she has created from language. The book's one drawback, however, is that it's written in the present tense, which sometimes makes it difficult for readers to concentrate
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