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 as it continues to astonish and enrich readers around the world.
A native of Christchurch, Hulme grew up on the South Island. It also earned a number of other awards, including the 1984 New Zealand Book Award and the Pegasus Award for Maori Literature. 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. The Bone People (1984) by Keri Hulme was the first New Zealand novel to receive the Booker Prize. 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.
The three are first brought together when Simon, after injuring his foot while playing truant, sneaks into Kerewin’s house-tower. 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. Set in a rural town along the coast of the North Island of New Zealand, The Bone People follows three main charactersJoe, a Maori man Kerewin, a part-Maori woman and Simon, a child of European heritage. 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. 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.
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