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3.95 AVERAGE
3.95 AVERAGE
Immediately thought of this book after reading Sydney Bridge Upside Down. There is something stark, brutal, and yet hopeful and beautiful about NZ literature. I love it.
Beautiful, crushing, and lasting. I haven't read it in 12 years, but my memories of it are perfectly vivid. I almost hesitate to re-read it for fear it won't live up to my memory of it.
I really did not expect to be so blown away by this book. I vaguely heard it was supposed to be a pioneer of contemporary New Zealand literature. I can now see how just about all post-1985 NZ fiction refers to Hulme in one way or another. Auē eat your heart out.
Set in on the rugged South Island coast, this story centres around three lost and broken souls, who each come to realise their own lives only make sense with the other two. It's heart-wrenching, bleak, quirky and funny, with moments of excruciating violence and unbelievable tenderness.
It also feels extraordinarily modern, despite its 1980s setting. Hulme has no fear of transgressing rules of what it means to write 'literature'. Seamless but thoughtful weaving of thought, dialogue and narration - Evaristo was 35 years late to the party. The main character's asexuality and the boy's gender/sexual ambivalence is so sensitively unfurled.
To call Hulme's writing poetic would be to do her down. She uses every part of the word and the page to cast her spell. Consciously. From the preface: 'I think the shape of words brings a response from the reader - a tiny, subconscious, unacknowledged but definite response.' I thought this was twaddle until I read chapter 1.
As poetry can draw attention to the extraordinary in the ordinary, Hulme's prose continually surprised and discomforted me. Her story finds strength in her refusal to conform to literary convention. I think this reflects the opportunity for growth her characters discovered when they broke and transcended their self-constructed sets of rules and beliefs about who they are and what life is. Hulme managed to make me reflect on my own life without being in the least didactic.
Hulme conjures such a wonderful sense of place. I will always be transported to the West Coast when I think about this book - the beautiful desolation, but not without hope. It's an acknowledgement of whakapapa and our common origin in Papatuānuku, Hulme's characters' and her own.
Māori mythology is woven through this book in a quiet but persistent way. Dreams and visions and supernatural help all feature. Hanging with a tantalising ambiguity. Let the reader interpret as they may. But what I think made it feel so modern (though this shouldn't be a novelty) was the deep respect for te ao Māori (reo, whenua, tangata) that underpinned every page. Only in recent years has the literary world really esteemed voices from indigenous and minority cultures. All the odds were against 'The Bone People' winning the Booker in 1985 but its merit was undeniable.
I wouldn't call this a page-turner, and the content is often extremely heavy and dismal. But it's the best depiction of the people and place of Aotearoa I've ever read. Exquisite.
Set in on the rugged South Island coast, this story centres around three lost and broken souls, who each come to realise their own lives only make sense with the other two. It's heart-wrenching, bleak, quirky and funny, with moments of excruciating violence and unbelievable tenderness.
It also feels extraordinarily modern, despite its 1980s setting. Hulme has no fear of transgressing rules of what it means to write 'literature'. Seamless but thoughtful weaving of thought, dialogue and narration - Evaristo was 35 years late to the party. The main character's asexuality and the boy's gender/sexual ambivalence is so sensitively unfurled.
To call Hulme's writing poetic would be to do her down. She uses every part of the word and the page to cast her spell. Consciously. From the preface: 'I think the shape of words brings a response from the reader - a tiny, subconscious, unacknowledged but definite response.' I thought this was twaddle until I read chapter 1.
As poetry can draw attention to the extraordinary in the ordinary, Hulme's prose continually surprised and discomforted me. Her story finds strength in her refusal to conform to literary convention. I think this reflects the opportunity for growth her characters discovered when they broke and transcended their self-constructed sets of rules and beliefs about who they are and what life is. Hulme managed to make me reflect on my own life without being in the least didactic.
Hulme conjures such a wonderful sense of place. I will always be transported to the West Coast when I think about this book - the beautiful desolation, but not without hope. It's an acknowledgement of whakapapa and our common origin in Papatuānuku, Hulme's characters' and her own.
Māori mythology is woven through this book in a quiet but persistent way. Dreams and visions and supernatural help all feature. Hanging with a tantalising ambiguity. Let the reader interpret as they may. But what I think made it feel so modern (though this shouldn't be a novelty) was the deep respect for te ao Māori (reo, whenua, tangata) that underpinned every page. Only in recent years has the literary world really esteemed voices from indigenous and minority cultures. All the odds were against 'The Bone People' winning the Booker in 1985 but its merit was undeniable.
I wouldn't call this a page-turner, and the content is often extremely heavy and dismal. But it's the best depiction of the people and place of Aotearoa I've ever read. Exquisite.
At times violent and strange, the story and characters represent the wildness of the NZ landscape. There are multiple ways "to be," and Hulme captures that in a troubled child with a troubled past. Mystical, lyrical, and beautiful. Unique and fresh.
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I liked the writing style. I thought the first few pages were beautiful and they were what led to me purchasing the book. Unfortunately the story just dragged on and on and I was 150 pages or so in without knowing what the point was. I also didn't really like any of the characters and stopped caring enough to find out where the story was going.
challenging
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Gosh this was an incredibly thought-provoking book but it boy was it difficult to read. The way it was written is disjointed in every sense - moving between different characters' points of view, between first and third person, between describing inner thoughts and narrative description, with some of the thoughts indented on the page and others not, and also between languages. The passage of time also felt very uneven, with some shorter periods such as their holiday together given a lot of extremely detailed description whilst in other places large chunks of time seemed to go by without a clear indication that that was happening. The prose itself was not the most readable either - there was a lot of esoteric, bordering on bizarre vocabulary and references, and sentences in the same paragraph often either had no clear thread joining them or connected to one another but only insofar as following a train of thought off on an eccentric tangent. There's also a lot of Maori for which you have to keep flipping to the back of the book to find the translation (would have been really helpful if these translations had been in footnotes on the page instead). So to say this book is not easy to dip in and out of would be an understatement - it's definitely one that needs you to set aside a chunk of time to immerse yourself fully in the rich and strange narrative voice or you won't have a hope in hell of understanding what's going on.
In a strange way though, I found the alien language and structuring sort of helped to make it feel like you were thrown into a whole different world. And whilst there's never a doubt that the main characters are weird, it feels like a very natural kind of weirdness in the context of the otherworldly atmosphere of the whole book. Or maybe it's just that the love between them is so vivid and rings so true that all their personal eccentricities fade to insignificance. That said, Kerewin is bizarre and I did find her more than a bit pretentious, although there is quite a lot of self-awareness too when she reads back some of her diary entries etc.
The way the abuse was handled was very uncomfortable and I don't really know how to feel about it. At no point does anyone actually condone it, although Kerewin does seem to be allowing some kind of 'measured, reasonable' (not a quote) beating. However, it's very clear that the perspective the reader is supposed to take is that Simon is better off going back to live with his horrendously abusive father than being placed in any kind of foster care / alternative care. And the love between them all is so strong that it's very convincingly done. Uncomfortable.
There are many, many more things that could be said about this book but I've already written loads and have now lost all motivation to write the rest down. Anyway, difficult to get into but very vivid and interesting characters whose lives eventually do pull you in.
Also - asexual main character!
In a strange way though, I found the alien language and structuring sort of helped to make it feel like you were thrown into a whole different world. And whilst there's never a doubt that the main characters are weird, it feels like a very natural kind of weirdness in the context of the otherworldly atmosphere of the whole book. Or maybe it's just that the love between them is so vivid and rings so true that all their personal eccentricities fade to insignificance. That said, Kerewin is bizarre and I did find her more than a bit pretentious, although there is quite a lot of self-awareness too when she reads back some of her diary entries etc.
The way the abuse was handled was very uncomfortable and I don't really know how to feel about it. At no point does anyone actually condone it, although Kerewin does seem to be allowing some kind of 'measured, reasonable' (not a quote) beating. However, it's very clear that the perspective the reader is supposed to take is that Simon is better off going back to live with his horrendously abusive father than being placed in any kind of foster care / alternative care. And the love between them all is so strong that it's very convincingly done. Uncomfortable.
There are many, many more things that could be said about this book but I've already written loads and have now lost all motivation to write the rest down. Anyway, difficult to get into but very vivid and interesting characters whose lives eventually do pull you in.
Also - asexual main character!
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Child abuse
This story is a well-woven tale about three main characters, their struggles and their strengths. It has been a long time since I've read a novel whose characters stayed in my mind even when I was not reading; throughout the day, I would find myself wondering what they would do and who they were beneath the surface of their stories. "The Bone People" was on a list of recommended books for a trip I took to New Zealand. I didn't have a chance to read it until after the trip, which was probably a good thing, because then I knew a little bit about the country and the Maori culture when I finally started the book. Although there is Maori language throughout, you don't need to understand it to appreciate the characters and their story. (There's a glossary in the book.) On the other hand, the book does give the reader a picture of the Maori culture and the Maoris' struggles in their world that is now dominated by European descendants. (A minor annoyance for me: I wish the glossary had been in alphabetical order rather than by page number because it was difficult to search for a word's meaning again when it was used a second time.)
I really enjoyed reading this book. I like the unusual narrative style a lot. The author is a poet and usually I find books with a poetic focus unreadable because they don't have a story to tell. This one has a story although it is not a predictable story.
The fact that I "enjoyed reading this book" is remarkable because it is about child abuse. I normally will not read a book about the hurting of children. Hulme's telling of this part of the story is so felt without being voyeuristic that I could read it.
What I don't like is the self-indulgence of the main character's self-description.
The fact that I "enjoyed reading this book" is remarkable because it is about child abuse. I normally will not read a book about the hurting of children. Hulme's telling of this part of the story is so felt without being voyeuristic that I could read it.
What I don't like is the self-indulgence of the main character's self-description.
This book destroyed me. I can't even. I need to wait eight hours to write a coherent review.