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The Bone People
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Wikipedia article
'The Bone People', styled by the writer and in some editions as 'the bone people', is a 1984 novel by New Zealand writer Keri Hulme. Set on the coast of the South Island of New Zealand, the novel focuses on three characters, all of whom are isolated in different ways: a reclusive artist, a mute child, and the child's foster father. Over the course of the novel the trio develop a tentative relationship, are driven apart by violence, and reunite. Mori and Pkeh (New Zealand European) culture, myths and language are blended through the novel. The novel has polarised critics and readers, with some praising the novel for its power and originality, while others have criticised Hulme's writing style and portrayals of violence.
Hulme spent many years working on the novel, but was unable to find a mainstream publisher who was willing to accept the book without significant editing; it was eventually published by the small all-women collective of Spiral. After initial commercial success in New Zealand, the book was published overseas and became the first New Zealand novel and first debut novel to win the Booker Prize in 1985, although not without controversy; two of the five judges opposed the book's choice for its portrayals of child abuse and violence. Nevertheless, the novel has remained popular into the 21st century, continuing to sell well in New Zealand and overseas, and is widely recognised as a New Zealand literary classic.
Plot summary
Kerewin lives in a tower overlooking the sea on the coast of the South Island. She is isolated from her family and interacts little with the local community, but is able to live independently after winning a lottery and investing well. On a gloomy and stormy afternoon a young child, Simon, appears at the tower. He is mute and communicates with Kerewin through hand signals and notes. He is picked up the next morning by a family friend; later that evening Simon's foster father, Joe, visits Kerewin to thank her for looking after Simon. After a freak storm years earlier, Simon was found washed up on the beach with very few clues as to his identity. Despite Simon's mysterious background, Joe and his wife Hana took the boy in. Later, Joe's infant son and Hana both died, forcing Joe to bring the troubled and troublesome Simon up on his own.
Kerewin finds herself developing a tentative relationship with the boy and his father. Gradually it becomes clear that Simon is a deeply traumatised child, whose strange behaviours Joe is unable to cope with. Kerewin discovers that, in spite of the real familial love between them, Joe is physically abusing Simon. She confronts Joe and he promises not to beat Simon without her permission.
Following an emotionally trying event, the three are driven violently apart. Simon sees the aftermath of a violent death and seeks Kerewin out for support, but she is angry with him for stealing a special knife. Simon reacts by punching her; she instinctively hits him in the chest and in response he kicks in the side of her guitar, a much-prized gift from her estranged mother. Kerewin tells him to get out. Simon goes to the town and breaks a series of shop windows, and when he is returned home by the police Joe calls Kerewin, who gives Joe permission to beat the child (but tells him not to "overdo it"). Joe beats Simon severely, believing he has driven Kerewin away. Simon, who has concealed a shard of glass from a shop window, stabs his father. Both are hospitalised, with Simon falling into a coma. Joe is released quickly but sent to prison for three months for child abuse, and in the meantime Kerewin leaves town and demolishes her tower.
Simon eventually recovers, albeit with some loss of hearing and brain damage, and is sent to live in foster care against his wishes. He is unhappy and continually runs away, trying to get back to Joe and Kerewin. After Joe's release from prison, he travels aimlessly and attempts to kill himself, but is rescued by an dying old man (a kaumtua) who says he has been waiting for Joe. He asks Joe to take over guardianship of a sacred waka (canoe), containing the spirit of a god, which Joe accepts. In the meantime, She becomes seriously ill, most likely with stomach cancer, but does not seek medical care. On the point of death in a mountain cabin, she is visited by a spirit of some kind and cured.
Kerewin returns to her community and takes custody of Simon. Joe also returns, bringing with him the sacred spirit. Without Kerewin's knowledge or permission, he contacts Kerewin's family, resulting in a joyous reconciliation. The final scene of the novel depicts the reunion of Kerewin, Simon and Joe, celebrating with family and friends back at the beach where Kerewin has rebuilt the old marae (communal meeting house), not as a tower but in the shape of a shell with many spirals. The end of the novel is an optimistic and hopeful one.
Themes and characters
with a catch of whitebait at krito; the character Kerewin Holmes has similarities to Hulme
The novel focuses on three main characters, all of whom are isolated in different ways. In the short prologue at the start of the novel, the then-unnamed characters are described as "nothing more than people by themselves", but together "the hearts and muscles and mind of something perilous and new, the instruments of change". The three characters are:
* 'Kerewin Holmes' Kerewin lives in an isolated tower by the sea, estranged from her family and community. She is part-Mori, part-Pkeh, and asexual. She is skilled, knowledgeable and creative, but although seeing herself as a painter finds herself unable to paint. At the outset of the novel she spends her days fishing and drinking. She has been described as a "clear stand-in for the author". Hulme said that Holmes began as an alter-ego character but "escaped out of my control and developed a life of her own".
*'Simon P. Gillayley' Simon is a mute child, aged six or seven, with an immense interest in details of the world around him. Simon has a deep attachment to both Joe and Kerewin, but he shows his love in odd ways. He exhibits a disregard for personal property. He is isolated from others by his inability to speak, and others mistake his muteness for stupidity. His life before meeting Joe is never described in detail, although it is hinted that he was abused before meeting Joe. He is Pkeh, with blonde hair and blue eyes.
*'Joe Gillayley' Joe is Simon's foster father. His alcoholism clouds his judgement, particularly in his raising of Simon, who he physically abuses. Joe seems to both love and respect Kerewin, but also to compete with her. He is deeply scarred and isolated by his wife's death, and is disconnected from his Mori heritage.
The relationship between these three troubled characters is characterised by violence and difficulty in communicating, yet over the course of the novel they bond and become "the bone people". Each represents aspects of New Zealand's racial culture. The 'Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature' describes them as becoming "a new multicultural group, founded on Mori spirituality and traditional ritual, who offer transformative hope to a country stunted by the violence of its divided colonial legacy". In Mori, the term iwi, usually referring to a tribal group, literally means "bone". Thus, in the novel, Simon imagines Joe saying the phrase "", which the book's glossary explains: "It means, O the bones of the people (where "bones" stands for ancestors or relations), or, O the people of the bones (i.e. the beginning people, the people who make another people)."
The spiral form frequently appears as a symbol throughout the novel, and is linked to the koru as an "old symbol of rebirth" in Mori culture. An early review by New Zealand writer and academic Peter Simpson noted how particularly apt it was for the book to have been published by the Spiral collective, because "the spiral form is central to the novel's meaning and design; it is in effect the code of the work informing every aspect from innumerable local details to the overall structure". It represents the sense of community, cultural integration and open-endedness that gives the characters hope at the end of the novel.
Publication history
As a teenager in the mid-1960s, Hulme began writing short stories about a mute child called Simon Peter. She continued to write about this character and develop the material which would eventually form a novel into adulthood, while working a series of short seasonal jobs such as tobacco-picking and later working as a journalist and television producer. The novel's two other key characters, Kerewin Holmes and Joe Gillayley, were developed at a later stage.
When Hulme began submitting her draft novel to publishers, she was told to trim it down and rewrite it; she reworked the manuscript seven times, with some assistance from her mother on editing the early chapters. In 1973 she moved to krito, on the West Coast of the South Island, where the book was completed. At least four publishers rejected the novel; at least two did not refuse it outright but required it to be edited significantly. Hulme refused, however, to allow them to "go through [her] work with shears". In rejecting the manuscript, William Collins, Sons wrote:
Undoubtedly Miss Hulme can write but unfortunately we don't understand what she is writing about.
Hulme had almost given up on publication when she met Marian Evans, a founder of the Women's Gallery and a member of the women's publishing collective Spiral. In 1981, Hulme sent Evans a copy of the manuscript, which Evans passed onto Mori leaders Miriama Evans (no relation to Marian) and Irihapeti Ramsden. Both Miriama and Ramsden saw the book as a Mori novel, with Ramsden comparing Hulme's writing to her childhood experiences of listening to Mori elders share oral traditions and stories. They decided to publish the work as a Spiral collective, on a limited budget but with help from other supporters and institutions. It was typeset by the Victoria University of Wellington Students' Association, and proofread by members of Spiral (Marian later acknowledged that the proofreading "was uneven, dependent on the skills of various helpers"). The novel's publication was also supported by a couple of small grants from the New Zealand Literary Fund.
The first edition, a print-run of 2,000 copies published in February 1984, sold out in weeks. After the second edition sold out similarly quickly, Spiral collaborated with English publishing house Hodder & Stoughton to co-publish the third edition. A further 20,000 copies were sold of this edition. The first American edition was published by Louisiana State University Press in 1985. The novel has been continuously in print in New Zealand since it was first published, and has been translated into nine languages (Dutch, Norwegian, German, Swedish, Finnish, Slovak, French, Danish and Spanish). In 2010 it was one of six novels comprising Penguin Books' 'Ink' series, a subset of 75 titles re-released in celebration of the publishing house's 75th anniversary, each with jacket art "specially designed by some of the world's best artists working in the world of tattoos and illustration". The cover features art by New Zealand tattoo artist Pepa Heller.
Literary significance and reception
in 1983
The novel polarised readers and reviewers, receiving both critical acclaim and strong criticism. It was praised by authors such as Alice Walker, who said in a letter to Spiral that it "is just amazingly wondrously great", and fellow New Zealand author Witi Ihimaera, who said he "was totally amazed that a book that I knew had been put together by a small feminist publication company had made it to the top of the literary world". Publisher Fergus Barrowman said: "It was fantastic, unlike anything else. It completely enlivened and altered my sense of New Zealand literature." On the other hand, contemporary reviewer Agnes-Mary Brooke, writing for 'The Press', called it "grandiose, inflated nonsense". Judith Dale, in a review for 'Landfall', asked whether the novel's unsettled structure formed part of the appeal: "Mystery or muddle, mess or masterpiece, is it precisely the unresolved, unsettling, unsettled and dissolving strands of 'the bone people' which make up its attraction for other readers as for me?"
New Zealand academic and writer C. K. Stead suggested in a 1985 article that Hulme should not be identified as a Mori writer, on the basis that she was only one-eighth Mori. He praised the novel however for its "imaginative strength" and said it was at its core "a work of great simplicity and power". His views on Hulme's identity were controversial, with other critics at the time calling them racist and reactionary. On another occasion he criticised the novel for its portrayals of violence and child abuse: "It was a tremendously powerful and interesting book, very original, but there were certain things I was certainly troubled about." Nevertheless, years later he described it as "New Zealand's finest novel". Hulme said in response to Stead's comments on her racial identity that he was "wrong, on all counts". In 1991 Hulme and other authors withdrew stories from an anthology Stead was engaged to edit, with Hulme citing his "extensive history of insult and attack that surrounds [his] relations with Maori and Polynesian writers".
'The Oxford Companion to New Zealand Literature' observes that the novel requires active concentration from the reader, given the mixture of poetry and prose, New Zealand slang and Mori phrases, realistic and supernatural elements, and tonal shifts from ordinary and banal to lyrical and sacred. It concludes, though, that: "However one responds to the novel, it must be acknowledged as one of contemporary New Zealand literature's most powerful rewritings of the ideology of nationalism and a prophetic vision of New Zealand's multicultural future."
The novel received praise from overseas publications. 'The Washington Post' called it a novel of "sweeping power" and an "original, overwhelming, near-great work of literature, which does not merely shed light on a small but complex and sometimes misunderstood country, but also, more generally, enlarges our sense of life's possible dimensions". Peter Kemp in the 'Sunday Times' concluded that "for all its often harrowing subject-matter, this first novel from a New Zealand writer radiates vitality ... New Zealand's people, its heritage and landscapes are conjured up with uncanny poetry and perceptiveness". Claudia Tate for 'The New York Times' wrote:
The novel's popularity has endured into the 21st century; in 2004, it remained in the New Zealand fiction bestseller list. In 2005, a public conference was held at the Stout Research Centre at Victoria University of Wellington to mark 20 years since the Booker Prize win. In 2006, the novel was voted New Zealand's favourite book in a public poll as part of the inaugural NZ Book Month. In 2018, it came third in two separate polls by 'The Spinoff' of the favourite New Zealand books of readers and literary experts respectively. It is the favourite novel of New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern. In 2022, it was included on the "Big Jubilee Read" list of 70 books by Commonwealth authors, selected to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Elizabeth II.
Hulme died in December 2021. Her 'New York Times' obituary reported that the book had at that time sold over 1.2 million copies. In July 2022, her family announced that the original novel manuscript would be sold at auction, with the proceeds to be used to support Mori authors, in accordance with Hulme's final wishes.
Awards
In 1984, the novel won the New Zealand Book Award for Fiction. The following year it won the Pegasus Prize for Literature, which that year had been earmarked for Mori fiction, and subsequently became the first New Zealand novel and first debut novel to win the Booker Prize.
The judges of the 1985 Booker Prize were Norman St John-Stevas, Joanna Lumley, Marina Warner, Nina Bawden and Jack Walter Lambert. The judges were split on 'The Bone People' as winner: Lumley and Bawden opposed it, with Lumley arguing that the book's subject matter of child abuse was "indefensible", "no matter how lyrically written". The other three were in favour; Warner considered it "a really extraordinary achievement, a very, very unusual piece of writing, the writing on every page springs surprises". St John-Stevas, who sat as chairman of the judging panel, said it was a "a highly poetic book, filled with striking imagery and insights".
Hulme was unable to attend the Booker Prize ceremony as she was in the United States at the time on a promotional tour following her receipt of the Pegasus Prize. She was called from the awards ceremony, and her response (broadcast live on television) was, "You're pulling my leg, aren't you? Bloody hell." Irihapeti Ramsden, Marian Evans and Miriama Evans of Spiral attended the ceremony itself on her behalf. They recited a karanga (Mori call) as they accepted the award, which led to Philip Purser of 'The Sunday Telegraph' describing them as "a posse of keening harpies". The reaction to the win was generally one of surprise; it was described by Philip Howard for 'The Sunday Times' as a "dark horse" and a "controversial choice", and by 'The Guardian' as "the strangest novel ever to win the Booker".
When asked what the Booker Prize meant to her, Hulme said: "The difference will be having a large amount of money and being able to keep doing the things I like reading, writing, painting, fishing and building." David Lange, prime minister at the time, sent her a congratulatory telegram, ending with: ("And so, to you, a flower of Aotearoa, this loving greeting").
References
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