The Bone People.

radio-appears reviewed The Bone People by Keri Hulme

Do not read if you have small children

No rating

Content warning child abuse vaguely discussed, mild spoilers for the ending

This book should come with a warning label: Do not read this if you are a parent to small children. Or: Do not read if you can't sympathize with people committing heinous crimes, yet without being heinous people.

It's a tough read. Joe, Simon and Kerewin. It's no spoiler to say this is a story about child abuse, but be warned, because it's taken much further than you'd think it would be, all with the expectation that you somehow continue to sympathize with the abusive character, Joe. Obviously, these three are also metaphors for those three parts of New Zealand society, Maori, European and mixed, but not being from the country myself it's hard to say how it should be interpreted. Far as I can see, we have a conflict between Maori and European - with Maori being the aggressor as it would be very hard to empathize with the European perspective otherwise - with a failure from mixed people to reconcile the two? I do not have the context to say how accurate this reading is.

On a more accessible level, this is a story about abuse, and how it affects everyone involved. Abused, abuser, bystander. Joe's abuse varies between more or less to be expected, considering the time period and absolutely unconscionable. Yet, it's hard not to somewhat understand where he is coming from. He is still reeling from the death of his wife and unborn child, and Simon, cast ashore after a shipwreck is deeply traumatized and legitimately difficult to raise. Living very rurally, the medical and therapeutic support he needs might as well be on the moon. Kerewin sees the abuse, and doesn't know how to respond. We don't either. What to do, how and would it be any use? From the moment we meet him, it's perfectly clear that Simon's unlikely to fare any better in a foster family. A large part of the story feels like a Mexican stand-off in this way. None will budge. Until, finally, the tension breaks, disastrously. And we still have about 150 pages left.

Another theme would be queerness. Kerewin is asexual and aromantic, before those terms were even in common parlance. Joe is heavily implied to be bisexual and Simon's gender-nonconformity (especially his long blond locks) is often remarked upon. A lesser author would have written this book about a lovely little queer found family. A better author wouldn't have done exactly that in the last chapter. Incorporating Maori beliefs and mythology as supernatural elements, all the characters deep-seated issues are essentially... just... fixed... in the last chapter. It rings incredible hollow. It makes me want to tear out those last few pages so we have to sit with the devastation of abuse and the desolation of a small family torn apart again.

adastra reviewed The Bone People. by Keri Hulme

Review of 'The Bone People.' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

The Bone People is a challenging book to read due to it's eclectic writing style. It breaks a lot of conventions and utilizes a variety of ways to let us see into the characters—though it's not always quite clear which character, or what is really happening, and certainly not why. The book probably needs re-reading a few times to truly be appreciated/analyzed.

At the core of it, however, is the strange relationship between a hermit painter who lives in her self-built tower, a very clever though mute child, and the child's foster father who can be very affectionate, but also very violent. The book has a few parts that are a bit tedious, but also quite a lot that are moving, shocking and suspenseful. It's certainly unlike anything I've ever read before.

Michael @ Knowledge Lost reviewed The Bone People by Keri Hulme

Review of 'The Bone People' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

It was a gloomy and stormy night, a mute 7 year old boy, Simon shows at the hermit Kerewin’s tower. The next morning his adoptive father, Joe came to pick him up. Because Simon couldn’t explain his motives, Kerewin has to rely on Joe to tell their curious story. A storm earlier that year sees Simon wash up on a beach with no memory or clue of his identity. Joe and his now deceased wife took the troubled boy in, but the traumatised boy is just too hard to cope with.

The Maori people use bones as tools and for art; they believe the notion of a person’s core is found within their skeleton. The bones are a common theme throughout the novel; each character is emotionally stripped to the bone. It is then we truly see what type of person these characters are. This novel is full of violence …

It was a gloomy and stormy night, a mute 7 year old boy, Simon shows at the hermit Kerewin’s tower. The next morning his adoptive father, Joe came to pick him up. Because Simon couldn’t explain his motives, Kerewin has to rely on Joe to tell their curious story. A storm earlier that year sees Simon wash up on a beach with no memory or clue of his identity. Joe and his now deceased wife took the troubled boy in, but the traumatised boy is just too hard to cope with.

The Maori people use bones as tools and for art; they believe the notion of a person’s core is found within their skeleton. The bones are a common theme throughout the novel; each character is emotionally stripped to the bone. It is then we truly see what type of person these characters are. This novel is full of violence and twisted emotions, making this a tense and draining book to read.

Something I really liked about this novel was Keri Hulme’s use of silence as tool that drives the plot. Simon is unable to speak, but we find out this is more of a psychological rather than a physical restriction, as he can sing. I think he is afraid to say the wrong thing, a defensive strategy. He uses notes as a primary form of communication, this way there are no expressions of his emotion and he can protect himself. The book goes a little further, Simon is also silent about the pain, when he is beaten he doesn’t make a sound. Kerewin also uses silence in a similar way, she built her tower to hide away and be a recluse; no one can hurt her if she is in solitude. She is always an artist suffering from a creative silence; not being able to let her creative side flow through her art. You can read this book and find many examples of silences within it; very effective and I spent a lot of time trying to work out the meaning behind it.

Each character has been damaged that their defensive mechanisms make it hard to open up to others. Yet the three main characters spend the entire novel trying to work out what love is and how to find it. They are all isolated themselves from the world; Kerewin in her tower, Simon with his inability to steak and Joe with his grief. There is just so many themes you could look at in The Bone People, the idea of a utopian society uniting Maori and Western culture, Post-colonial discourse, cultural illness, violence as a way to communicate and you can just go on and on.

This is not the easiest book to read, it is confronting and tense. The Bone People left me with mixed emotions; on one hand the writing was wonderful and left me thinking about so many issues but on the other hand the violence just left me with a sick feeling. I often try to leave my emotional opinion of the subject matter out of analysing a book but I just can’t help it with this one. In the end, I think the book has something important to say and worth reading.

This review originally appeared on my blog; literary-exploration.com/2013/11/29/book-of-the-month-the-bone-people/

Lowrain reviewed The Bone People. by Keri Hulme

Review of 'The Bone People.' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

A very experimental and daring piece, but disappointing in the end when, literally, deux ex macchina saves the main characters. It's difficult to read for many reasons, but most especially because of some very self-indulgent ramblings. But then again, there are a lot of writers who over-indulged in fits of poetic rambling in the Western cannon, and it's called great literature. She won a Booker award and it's highly acclaimed. But, frankly, I think it'd best be read in lit class.

If child abuse is a huge trigger issue, avoid this book. One thing I found intriguing is that she goes to pains to make the child unlikeable and "unmanageable," but still sympathetic when you see the world from his eyes. And then she makes the abuser very likable so that you're almost on his side, hoping it'll all work out. But then there's a very vivid scene where you're …

A very experimental and daring piece, but disappointing in the end when, literally, deux ex macchina saves the main characters. It's difficult to read for many reasons, but most especially because of some very self-indulgent ramblings. But then again, there are a lot of writers who over-indulged in fits of poetic rambling in the Western cannon, and it's called great literature. She won a Booker award and it's highly acclaimed. But, frankly, I think it'd best be read in lit class.

If child abuse is a huge trigger issue, avoid this book. One thing I found intriguing is that she goes to pains to make the child unlikeable and "unmanageable," but still sympathetic when you see the world from his eyes. And then she makes the abuser very likable so that you're almost on his side, hoping it'll all work out. But then there's a very vivid scene where you're "present" for the abuse. After that, the end struck me as ridiculous on many, many levels. It should be noted that some critics have suggested it be read as an allegory, with each person representing one of the populations of post-colonial New Zealand. That would make the child abuse and odd relationships more ... digestible, but doesn't really work for me, possibly because I know so little about New Zealand's native people and just have to draw on what I know of post-colonial, native cultures in general - a very poor framework for reading about a specific people, I know.