The Bone People

Keri Hulme is a New Zealand writer, best known for her Man Booker prize-wining novel, The Bone People.

The story is set on the harsh South Island beaches of New Zealand and recounts the stories and lives of three disparate and emotionally damaged people of mixed European and Maori heritage. 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. The sole survivor of a mysterious shipwreck, Simon has been adopted by a widowed Maori factory worker, Joe Gillayley, who is both tender and monstrously brutal toward the child. The novel uses journal entries, poems, dreams and narration to tell this raw, complicated story and to reveal each character’s motivations and desire to connect. Through shifting points of view, Hulme weaves together an unparralled story of vitality and glaring isolation.