I've got too many books on my bookshelves. 📕📖📗📘📙📚
Whenever I read a book I have to make the tough decision whether to keep it or donate it to the local book exchange.
I just finished reading Keri Hulme's 1983 book, The Bone People; it's a borderline case.
Hulme is a skilled and beautiful writer, and the book deservedly won the 1985 Booker prize. The language and the world Hulme created is deep and evocative, and it's a pleasure to read. It's a shame she didn't publish more. Hulme's also a New Zealander (who died just last December), and the book is set in New Zealand. All strong reasons to keep the book.
On the other hand the subject matter is questionable, given that in some ways it minimises the seriousness of domestic violence and child abuse. Related to this, I felt the story resolved itself too easily, inappropriately introducing fantasy elements to conveniently solve deep and long-lasting character-driven psychological problems. More below.
So I really don't know. Writing this review will be my decision-making process. Future me will make the call. As always, this is a personal reaction and I do almost no scholarly work to read others' opinions.
Personally, for me The Bone People was both closely familiar and somewhat distanced. It is essentially a New Zealand story, populated with familiar New Zealand places, landscapes, ways of life, language and people. Set in the early 80s, it is a deeply recognisable New Zealand of my childhood, and many aspects felt comfortably homely. Hulme was one eighth Maori, and for me that proportion of English/Maori infuses the book in the same way that it infuses New Zealand life. Many characters are Maori, or part Maori, and Maori language is used naturally throughout the book (with a dictionary at the back).
On the other hand, the story is distanced from me personally in two ways. Firstly, it's distanced in geography. It's rural/small town, centred on the West Coast of the South Island; I'm more suburban/city, and so my childhood was a bit different. Secondly, it's distanced in time. Some of the unquestioned attitudes of the 80s are uncomfortably jarring to 2020s me.
The story is about three people, Kerewin, Joe and Simon, and they are intertwined in a way that makes it hard to introduce one without the other. All three characters have past issues, which we're only gradually made aware of, and only ever partially. All three are lonely, relying on each other to satisfy the need to love and be loved, but at the same time struggling to deal with the consequences. Towards the end of the book Kerewin, who is an artist, sculpts a work which has their three heads merging together and each facing outwards.
Joe first: Early thirties, he's recently lost his wife and young child. He gave up his study and works as a labourer. During a storm a boat sunk off the coast and Joe was part of the local search party. Joe finds the sole survivor, a young (three-ish years old?) boy, who he calls Simon.
Simon's previous family is never found, and no one seems to make much effort either to find people who know him or to help him recover; more by default than anything else Simon lives with Joe. Simon cannot speak, and though extremely bright is traumatised in many ways. He communicates using his own self-made sign language, and also writes when necessary. At the beginning of the book Joe and Simon live together, though Simon sometimes stays with Joe's extended family while he works. Simon is supposed to attend school, but often he wags and wanders the streets unattended.
For me, one of the downsides to the story is the lack of realism about Simon. We never really know how old he is (though at the end official reports say he's seven). Nonetheless, he often acts too mature, and I can't help feeling that maybe Hulme didn't know children. Simon knows too much, and his writing is too good, despite getting very little education either from Joe or school. He comes across as more of a fantasy character than a real boy. It also feels a little jarring that the police/doctors/social workers/psychologists/etc weren't more involved in helping Simon. It's certainly not the New Zealand I'm familiar with, though maybe it's 1980s rural life?
Finally, Kerewin Holmes. With a name very similar to the author, we can't but help imagine there is some personal overlap. Kerewin's a wealthy overachiever with a mysterious past. She won her money from the lottery, but has pulled away from family and career. At the start of the book she's recently moved to the area and built herself a dream home (self-designed tower***, with a mix of both fancy and simple features) to live an off-the-grid life. She fishes, farms, builds and paints, and then pays for anything else she wants from her seemingly bottomless bank account. She's eloquent and literate, while at the same time down-to-earth and blunt. She enjoys company, including drinking at the pub and playing the guitar, but doesn't like touching and is asexual.
(***I wonder if Hulme considered how uncomfortable a tower would be to live in for everyday life. I've lived in a four-level townhouse for a few months, and it's very inconvenient to have to walk up and down stairs when you want to get things from another room!)
While I guess Kerewin is supposed to be an idealised or exaggerated or twisted version of Hulme, to me her skills in too many separate areas are unrealistic. Similar to Simon, she is more fantasy than real. Kerewin is a formidable fighter, after a year spent in Japan. She's a talented artist. She's built some kind of solar perpetual motion machine, which she doesn't tell anyone else about. She too well-read in too many different areas, to the point that she seems to know better than experts (though it helps her that Hulme often portrays townie-experts as theoretical fools).
The three characters get together when Simon breaks into Kerewin's tower. Simon likes Kerewin's blunt/wise/caring attitude, Joe likes that Kerewin accepts/understands Simon, and Kerewin grudgingly enjoys their company.
The three appear to be getting closer, as we, the reader, also get to know more about them. All three characters are sympathetic and we care for them and hope they get together as a family.
But then we learn that Joe is repeatedly physically abusing Simon. Joe, in his outdated and wrong 1980s way, sincerely believes that hitting is the best way to correct wrong behaviours in children. When he's calm and sober he merely smacks. But he drinks far too often, and when he's frustrated he severely beats up Simon, knocking him unconscious and leaving scars over his body. The extended family and Kerewin are aware of this and are angry with Joe, but since he's mostly loving to Simon they don't intervene.
Joe, Kerewin, the extended family and the local community are also heavy drinkers and smokers. It is so normalised that Simon sometimes drinks and smokes alongside them. Simon joins them sometimes in the pub, too (the barkeeper points out that it's better than kids waiting in the car while the parents are in the pub).
At heart this is a tragic story. We've got to know characters who are smart and mostly decent people and who we sympathise with, and yet they make horrific, though contextually understandable, mistakes. There's a combination of (a) ignorant child-raising practices, (b) a culture reliant on heavy drinking, (c) no social support when things get tough, (d) friends/family unwilling to intervene, and (e) a culture sceptical/hostile of outside professional help.
On this point I have mixed opinions about whether Hulme's tone of voice hits the right mark between sympathising with the characters and culture versus pointing out who and what was the cause of the tragedy. To some extent I felt a little uncomfortable that Hulme's tone was too accepting and normalising of a broken society that creates broken and hurting children. Even while describing the horrific consequences, it still seemed largely positive of the drinking culture that nurtured the brokenness. And it seems to support the distrust of experts.
Finally, things come to a head when Joe beats up Simon so badly that he is hospitalised with permanent injuries and Joe is sent to prison for three months.
Sadly, it's at this point where I think Hulme's storytelling goes wrong.
The first 330 pages are a brilliant hard-hitting morality tale, and I think the story would have been stronger if it just ended there, with Joe in prison, Simon in hospital and Kerewin physically tearing down her dream-home and reflecting on her place in the tragedy.
But I guess Hulme wanted a happy ending, and Part IV, the last 110 pages, feels like an inconsistent add-on.
To me, the final quarter of the book feels like an odd change from realism to a fantasy-style Miyazaki-ish world, with gods and spirits influencing the everyday world. That's fine for Miyazaki, because his world-building is consistent from the beginning. But I felt it didn't work in The Bone People, as to me it was too much of a jarring change. (I get it, that this is supposed to be a Maori spiritual worldview, but if we accept that then we lose the impact of the book's social-psychological morality-tale.)
To explain my thinking I'm going to have to give some end-book spoilers. If you don't want spoilers, close your eyes while reading below.
In Part IV Joe and Kerewin separately both encounter supernatural forces, which apparently cures them both of their problems. Joe encounters a dying man who has been looking after a god, and as he dies he charges Joe with continuing the guardianship. At the same time Kerewin almost dies of cancer, but is cured by a mysterious person with potions.
Both stories are presented as quick fantasy cures of deeper long-term psychological issues, and it feels uncomfortable that things are resolved so easily.
The story ends with Kerewin building a new house, Joe joining her, and Simon, who had been put in foster care, returning to live with them. The extended family is all there with them. The tone of the book is that of a mostly happy ending.
It was that final part, to me, that was most offensive. Hulme created a world in which it was seemingly okay for a severely abused child to be put back with his abuser. It was as if Hulme had shown us the seriousness of family child abuse, and the complex social causes, and then she said it's right to return a child into that same environment all over again after a quick spiritual encounter.
Finally, my decision. As much as I want to like Hulme's book, it's that offensiveness that gets to me. I'll drop the book off at the free book exchange. Others may read the book differently.
