The Bone People - Keri Hulme - ★.½

AUTHOR: Keri Hulme

GENRE: Literary Fiction

PUBLICATION DATE: January 1, 1984

RATING: 1.5 stars.

In a Nutshell: A literary fiction about three broken people and their intersecting paths. Enjoyed the setting and the glimpses into indigenous Māori culture. Character-oriented and slow, which was fine for me. Stream of consciousness writing, poetic prose, surrealism, and extreme scenes of corporal abuse against a child, none of which work for me. Not my kind of book.

Plot Preview:

Kerewin Holmes: A reclusive artist who prefers staying in solitude in her “Tower”.

Simon: A mute boy who breaks into her home and somehow makes himself a regular presence in Kerewin’s life.

Joe: Simon’s foster father who is a strange mixture of tenderness and aggressiveness.

Once Simon and Joe become regulars in Kerewin’s life, we learn more about the trio and their complex personalities through their interactions.

The story is written in their perspectives shifting between first and third person at random.

Take this review with a huge pinch of salt. I had grabbed this book only for two reasons:

(1) The promise of magical realism; and 

(2) the author’s background (she was a New Zealand poet of half-Māori descent.)

Unfortunately, the magical realism was more like mysticism (which I am not fond of), and the poetess in the author dominated the prose writer. 

Further,

👉🏻 Booker books (both regular Booker and international Booker) are absolutely not for me. My hit rate with them is abysmal.

👉🏻 Stream of consciousness isn't for me.

👉🏻 Purple prose isn't for me.

👉🏻 Books with severe child abuse (corporal punishment and mental abuse in this case, not sexual) aren’t for me.

👉🏻 Books with alcoholic characters aren’t for me.

Basically, I am the wrong reader for this book. I struggled to keep going with the extremely meandering narrative, to connect with the two adult lead characters, and to make sense of the frivolous violence. Simon was the only one I felt something for, but that is to be expected as I have a soft spot for children.

I did find some points interesting (though not necessarily appealing) about the book:

🦴 Though Keri Hulme was a prolific writer, this is her only published novel. She worked on two more novels after this one saw success, but both were left unfinished, reasons unknown.

🦴 It took twelve years for a publisher to finally accept the manuscript of ‘The Bone People’ for publication. Not surprisingly, this wasn’t a mainstream publisher but a small NZ press focussing on female artists and voices.

🦴 This book won the International Booker Prize in 1985, making it New Zealand’s first Booker winner and also making Hulme the first ever debut writer to win the Prize. The decision was controversial; two of the five judges were strongly opposed to the portrayal of child abuse and violence in the novel.

🦴 The book begins with the author’s preface titled “Standards in a non-standard book”. This was the most fascinating part of the novel to me.

🦴 The book is set on the South Island of New Zealand, and the location and its cultural ethos and atmosphere is portrayed interestingly.

🦴 The prologue is intriguing and befuddling at once; it is so vague that I almost abandoned the book! My suggestion to readers would be to read the prologue once again after you get to know the three characters. Only then it makes better sense.

🦴 The plot is surprisingly minimal for such a lengthy book. (560 pages on Kindle, 19 hours 30 minutes on audio.) The writing comprises mostly conversations, reminiscences, dreams and surreal events (in the final section), and shuffles between first and third person. The actual story is minimal and each scene stretches much.

🦴 Kerewin and Joe are complex but in a self-contradictory way. Both say one thing and do something contrary, which is exactly what many humans do. So I guess they are true to life, but tough to figure out such characters in fiction.

🦴 Kerewin’s personality and lifestyle seems to have some points in common with the author’s. With the similarity in their names, I can only wonder if the author deliberately infused shades of herself into her character.

🦴 Considering how the author was asexual, the novel has absolutely no mention of sexual connection or romance. The trio form a kind of family, and Kerewin and Joe even consider each other partners, but never through the lens of attraction.

🦴 The individual chapters are quite long, with there being only twelve chapters other than the prologue and epilogue. These are divided across four sections with cryptic titles, each set in one season of the year. Section four was the weakest to me because of its sudden transition into surrealism.

🦴 There are several words/phrases in Māori, all of which are left untranslated. There’s a glossary at the end. (Useless in an audiobook, though.)

🦴 Each of the main three characters reflect one specific identity of NZ’s racial profile, with Kerewin being mixed race, Joe being Māori but disconnected from his roots, and Simon having European ancestry.

🦴 Māori traditions come out strongly at times. But I am also worried about whether this book casts negative shades on Māori culture.

🦴 The ending is overly neat and happy for such a disturbing book.

I hope the above helps you take a call on this work. It would help if you are fond/tolerant of purple prose, meandering narratives, and complex abuse scenes.

As far as I am concerned, this wasn’t a reader-book match made in heaven. My reading preferences and personal discomfort got in the way of my appreciating the novel better.

I’d like to end with what one publisher wrote to the author’s agent while rejecting the manuscript: "Undoubtedly Miss Hulme can write but unfortunately we don't understand what she is writing about."

Pretty much the same feelings, bro! 🥴

What a wonderful start to my 2026 reading! 🤦🏻‍♀️