A review by serendipitysbooks
The Bone People by Keri Hulme

challenging dark emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

The Bone People won the Booker Prize in 1985, the first debut and the first New Zealand novel to do so. I first read it back in 2020 and found it a more enjoyable and impactful reading experience the second time around. More than any other book, this one has convinced me of the value of rereading. I certainly noticed details about the characters and styltic choices that didn't register on my first reading. It's set mostly in a small town on the West Coast of New Zealand's South Island and is the story of Kerewin, Joe, and Simon. All three are outsiders dealing with trauma, and Joe, in particular, personifies the phrase "hurt people hurt". Simon was rescued from a shipwreck in which his presumed parents drowned, and Joe, who is mourning his beloved wife, has become his unofficial foster father. Simon is mute, exhibits a whole range of destructive, antisocial behaviours, and is often uncontrollable. Kerewin, a reclusive artist who bears a very close resemblance to the author herself, befriends them after Simon steals from her. The first part of the book focuses on the way they come to form a loose and unconventional found family, the ways they help Simon, and they ways they, Joe especially, spectacularly fail him. Trigger warnings abound for absolutely horrific physical abuse as well as emotional abuse. Eventually, the trio are torn apart, and the book then follows their separate trajectories.

Several things stand out about this novel . The first is Hume's unique and unconventional writing style, which I recall finding challenging when I first read it. This time, I found it a pleasure and really enjoyed the freshness and insightfulness of many of her phrasings. Obviously, I've grown as a reader, but I think already being familiar with the story and knowing what was going on helped, as did reading on audio this time. The narrator did a fabulous job at capturing the rhythm and flow of the prose. The second is the way the book depicts the authentic Maori world and the way it interacts with the Pakeha world, sometimes smoothly, but often not. Finally, miraculously given his inexcusable abuse, Hume had me rooting for Joe. I could see the ways in which he, with support and guidance from Kere, made an ideal parent for Simon. The often small moments when they managed to connect with Simon, to understand what was underlying his behaviour, when he realised he could trust them, were devastatingly beautiful. Hume's rejection of the binary good parent vs violent parent that makes this a challenging and confronting read, yet I also found it to be richly rewarding

Content Warnings