About this title: Winner of the Booker Prize in 1985, "The Bone People" is the story of Kerewin, a despairing part-Maori artist who is convinced that her solitary life is the only way to face the world. Her cocoon is rudely blown away by the sudden arrival during a rainstorm of Simon, a mute six-year-old whose past seems to hold some terrible trauma. In his wake comes his foster-father Joe, a Maori factory worker with a nasty temper. The narrative unravels to reveal the truths that lie behind these three characters, and in so doing displays itself as a huge, ambitious work that tackles the clash between Maori ...
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Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Edition: Book Club Edition. Us ed.
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Louisiana State University Press
Date Published: 1985
ISBN-13:9780807112847ISBN:0807112844
Description: Good in very good dust jacket. jacket in plastic, page blocks mottled, front flyleaf missing; old price in ink on title page; text and binding fine. Sewn binding. Paper over boards. 450 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
"I out myself as a philistine, I guess, with my dislike of this painfully literary book, which I read only because I was in New Zealand and thought I ought to read a famous NZ author. Once I got past the aggressively defensive introduction (Idiosyncratic Author is idiosyncratic! I can dizzily swap first-person POV and use my own grammar and make up my own words because I am Artistic!) and the Mary-Sueish tinge of the central character being named after the author (*headdesk*), I found this book...confusing. Parts of it were interesting, parts dull, and hey, surprise woo-woo at the end (which I kind of wish had been introduced sooner, because it was cool, and actually, you know, went some where). I didn't particularly like any of the characters, but I suppose that was part of the point."
"Quick Synposis: Novel - A Moari recluse finds a "family" with a orphaned boy of unknown origins and his adoptive Maori father. Being part of a family means being privy to its secrets and pain.
Probably my favorite book ever. I always tell people how I cried myself to sleep for a week while reading this book. It's so good it hurts. I think I have lived a pretty painless happy life. So to read about trauma and pain sometimes seems a bit like watching from the outside. I can't always connect to the pain. But this book. This author. Her prose. Made me feel like I was there. Made me love the characters and be just as hurt by their actions, and still be able to love as if it were really happening in my life. It's a beautiful book, as close to poetry as prose can get, and I don't even like poetry."
"This is a book that people either love or hate. It deals with issues that are normally in black and white, and paints them in shades of gray.
The protagonist, Kerewin Holmes, part white, part Maori, lives alone in a lighthouse in New Zealand. Set in her ways, she is content to live out her days in solitude. One day a mysterious, silent, blonde boy winds up on her beach. Unsure how to handle this situation, she deals with it the best she can by taking him in and slowly figures out who his caretaker is. Soon, she meets his adoptive father, Joe, a Maori. Kerewin soon becomes close to Joe and to his son. However, as Kerewin quickly finds out, the relationship between Joe and his adopted son is very complicated, abusive, and heartbreaking. Yet, despite the despair and the abuse, the reader finds it impossible to consider Joe a villain, and also gets embroiled in the tangled and fiery relationship between Kerewin, Simon, and Joe.
This book confronts issues of ethnic identity, child abuse, and alcoholism. After you read the final chapter, you find it hard to close the book and walk away from the lives of the three main characters. You also cannot read this book and not be swept away by the writing of Keri Hulme."
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