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"Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all"
The Bone People
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The Bone People
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This Book is Currently in the Wild!
2 journalers for this copy...
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It looks like NZ takes the blue ribbon in the Great NZ -> Canada/Canada -> NZ postal race :^). Thanks so much, Boreal, for sending this book. I'm really looking forward to reading it!
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The Bone People gathered dust on my bookshelf for two years and I was never inspired to tackle it, deterred by something I read in a pamphlet published on the thirty-fifth anniversary of the Booker Prize (Martyn Goff said the novel was "difficult to get into" though he otherwise reviewed it favourably). It is difficult to get into, but only 'til you get past the first seven or eight pages -- a series of random images and small, poetic descriptions that only make sense once you understand what the story is about. Then the characters come to life, the story opens up and I couldn't put this book down. Written over a sixteen year period, The Bone People was first published in 1983 by the Spiral Collective (a non-profit feminist press based in Wellington, New Zealand) after having been turned down by several major publishers. It won the 1984 New Zealand Book Award for fiction, the Pegasus Prize for Maori Literature and then -- in 1985 -- the Booker Prize. Bone People tells the story of thirty-something Kerewin "Kere" Holmes (note the similarity to the author's own name), who lives in a six story tower of her own design near a beach on the South Island of New Zealand. Kere, a cigarillo-smoking, guitar-playing, independently wealthy artist and loner, drinks too much, talks to herself and doesn't like people -- children even less. She spends her time fishing, beach combing and playing elaborate word games in her head. But one day a small, blonde child with "seabluegreen eyes" appears at her window wearing a pendant around his neck bearing his name (Simon) and the information that he "cannot speak". Simon, or "Himi" as he is called by his Maori father, changes Kere's life. The Bone People tells a tale of despicable violence, and tries to illuminate at how seemingly unforgivable actions can nonetheless -- in certain circumstances -- be redeemed. Perhaps deliberately, it leaves some significant moral questions unanswered in favour of exploring more honestly the texture and dimensions of love, forgiveness and reconciliation within families and communities. This is a highly memorable book, richly deserving of the Booker, by fluke or not.
(Top left: 2003 photo of Keri Hulme, courtesy CBC Radio's Writers & Company.) |
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Released 4 yrs ago (2/23/2007 UTC) at -- wild released somewhere in Vancouver in Vancouver, British Columbia Canada WILD RELEASE NOTES:
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