Beautiful language, disturbing words

books:


	• The Bone People: A Novel Keri Hulme Penguin (Non-Classics), 1986 - 464 pages average customer review:based on 150 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Deserving of 10 Stars

This was one of the best books I've ever read, and I've read a lot. Of the books I love, my relationship to those books are intellectual. My experience with The Bone People was purely emotional. From the first page I was hooked and I never looked back. This is a gut-wrenching read and not for everyone. It is not an easy read. It is a book that will never leave you, with characters you will never forget. This is one of the most unique books I have ever read. It is a book that requires a careful read. It is a timeless story. It is a love story, but not at all in the traditional sense. It is a story of three very damamaged people (one is a child) who come together and with all people that love each other, they have the power to heal each other, and destroy each other and over the course of this novel they do all this and more. It's a story of redemption and second chances. It's a harrowing yet fascinating look at the Maori culture. If you're considering reading this book - do so. If you can't get into it right off the bat, stick with it. This book is like no other. It won the Booker back in the 80s. Very highly recommended.

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Beautiful language, disturbing words

This is a very difficult review for me to write. This book was recommended to me by a new friend.

The language is simply beautiful - even/especially the Maori words that I do not understand. Hulme's words create color drenched pictures and music that is haunting and incredibly sad. (Fitting music for the background of this book.)

The reason that this is a difficult review to write is that because Hulme is so successful at putting us inside the (3) main characters...but those are places I do not want to be. I sympathize with these incredibly damaged people - but I cannot empathize with them. The amount of violence - especially against a small child - leaves me heartsick and almost unwilling to read on.

Because of that level of violence - I was unable to trust Hulme when the story came to a conclusion. I simply no longer believed that the characters would act as they did.

This book provides a window to a world far from my own...one very foreign and very disturbing.

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Shakespeare's "Tempest" Down Under

This is what one is temptedd to call a perfect book. Hulme's rough wisdom penetrates to illumine the brokenness of the self and the unhealable nature of relationships. It is not a counsel of despair but a mirror held up to human nature.

*Perfection!*

This book defies the constraints of the written word and captures a tri-soul: a devastating, miraculous, chameleon-like story that will reach out and grab your psyche, changing you forever. Deeply psycho-empathetic, alchemical, and rich beyond anything you've ever read. A gem hiding under the literary rubble of ego's and forced structures. Hulme breaks the mold that binds us to repetitive story-telling and reveals a world so intensely unique that we will be convinced to claim it as our own.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Integrating both Maori myth and New Zealand reality, The Bone People became the most successful novel in New Zealand publishing history when it appeared in 1984. Set on the South Island beaches of New Zealand, a harsh environment, the novel chronicles the complicated relationships between three emotional outcasts of mixed European and Maori heritage. Kerewin Holmes is a painter and a loner, convinced that "to care for anything is to invite disaster." Her isolation is disrupted one day when a six-year-old mute boy, Simon, breaks into her house. The sole survivor of a mysterious shipwreck, Simon has been adopted by a widower Maori factory worker, Joe Gillayley, who is both tender and horribly brutal toward the boy. Through shifting points of view, the novel reveals each character?s thoughts and feelings as they struggle with the desire to connect and the fear of attachment.

Compared to the works of James Joyce in its use of indigenous language and portrayal of consciousness, The Bone People captures the soul of New Zealand. After twenty years, it continues to astonish and enrich readers around the world.

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