The Bone People

De: Keri Hulme

Available in audio for the first time is Aotearoa New Zealand's first Booker Prize-winning novel, The Bone People by Keri Hulme.

With narration and original taonga puoro music by Ruby Solly, this powerful and mesmerising book tracks the complicated relationships between three outcasts: Kerewin, an artist estranged from her family and art; a mute boy called Simon, who tries to steal from her; and his tender but brutal foster father Joe.

Masterpiece, OK!

Aww the redemptive powers, aww the soul. All gods and little fishes! This book was at times hard to read, hard not to read. I don’t think I’ll ever forget this book.

A hard nut of a story with a soft core

The Bone People is Keri Hulme’s first novel, well deserving the Booker Prize award for its poetically moving story of broken people and severed relationships glued back together by alcohol, good food, and the land. The setting is the coastline of the South Island (NZ); the atmosphere, the grey sand and biting wind, the crashing waves, the ocean life struggling to survive, allegorically captures the turbulent relationship of the three main characters: Joe, a Māori man dealing with loss, hurt, and his fists, Simon, a mysterious child who is adopted (kind of) by Joe, and Kerewin, the loaner artists with her own story of severance and longing.

The story is not an easy read in more ways than one. The contents deals with both violence and healing. The individuals’ pain is directly tied to the people’s pain, and while the story concerns Maori and Pakeha (the offspring of the early white settlers to NZ) in many ways this story could be understood by people around the world who experienced colonization by European settlers. The main difference is that the land tells half the story, making The Bone People unique to NZ.
Like the hybrid identities the story itself is a mixture of magical realist elements, highbrow poetry, new age wisdom, legend and myth. At first this feels cluttered, like opening someone’s treasure trove with all the goodies thrown in together, until you look more carefully and discover that everything is perfectly laid out. It’s a slow read in my opinion and like any good story, needs to be revisited.

I read this book way back in first year of university in Canterbury (NZ) and found a lot of the story both familiar and alien. Domestic violence in the 1970s and 80s in NZ was much more prevalent than the government wanted to admit. If you didn’t experience it personally then you knew someone who did. Broken and glued back together with alcohol. People don’t wanna go there. And fair enough. But if you don’t confront your demons then this can cause problems. NZ is only really beginning to deal with its colonial past, and The Bone People offers a possible answer, warts’n all. Whaikorero, talking rather than punching, listening rather than blaming.

Ruby Solly, the narrator, is imminently capable of reading such a challenging story. With Pakeha, Jewish, and Maori heritage, Solly is able to capture the voice and the sentiment of the characters like no one else. I’ve listened to many audiobooks but in my opinion Solly is perhaps the best story teller so far. It’s so refreshing to hear her speak. Being Maori she gets the pronunciation right (even the Japanese is spot on!) But not only that; the cadence and tone, the pauses, it all manages to capture the story magically.

This is a powerful story read by a gifted narrator.