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marioncromb's review
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Wonderful to see an aroace (and nonbinary/gnc) main character in a Booker Prize winning book from the 80s! Honestly building a medieval stone tower by the sea to live and draw in with a well stocked booze cellar is goals tbh.
I really enjoyed spending time in the NZ setting with these characters and the ways they clashed and grew together. The book sets up several mysteries at the start that are fun to unravel and come back to at the end, although maybe some moral unease on my end at the enjoyment in unraveling one of those mysteries being 'what exactly was the traumatic abuse that happened to this child'.
The book is very long though and in the second half I was definitely flagging in places where it felt morr indulgent or repetitive. Its a little deus ex machina at the end as well, i wasn't totally convinced things could be fixed that easily, realistically. Although arguably it is about the hope of things being better, this time.
I really enjoyed spending time in the NZ setting with these characters and the ways they clashed and grew together. The book sets up several mysteries at the start that are fun to unravel and come back to at the end, although maybe some moral unease on my end at the enjoyment in unraveling one of those mysteries being '
The book is very long though and in the second half I was definitely flagging in places where it felt morr indulgent or repetitive. Its a little deus ex machina at the end as well, i wasn't totally convinced things could be fixed that easily, realistically. Although arguably it is about the hope of things being better, this time.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcohol, Domestic abuse, Physical abuse, and Violence
Moderate: Child abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Alcoholism, and Grief
Minor: Cannibalism, Addiction, Homophobia, Sexual violence, Pedophilia, Drug use, Excrement, Death of parent, Drug abuse, Colonisation, Racial slurs, Suicidal thoughts, Medical trauma, and Acephobia/Arophobia
nisobe's review against another edition
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence
Moderate: Child abuse, Suicidal thoughts, and Death
memezaharamole's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Amazing - challenging is probably an apt description of the book, not due to the pace, but due to themes. I had been told it was dark, so had put off reading it in a poor headspace and picked it up while feeling a little better. Was still a tough read, but found it healing, looking at the depths of humanity, the quirks that come from trauma. And how relationships are so difficult but at the core of what makes us human.
As a New Zealander living overseas, the use of Te Reo Maori and references to the homeland really helped ground me in this book. One of the best I have ever read.
As a New Zealander living overseas, the use of Te Reo Maori and references to the homeland really helped ground me in this book. One of the best I have ever read.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Child abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, Physical abuse, and Domestic abuse
Moderate: Cancer, Medical content, Addiction, and Pedophilia
exiles's review
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Alcohol, Child abuse, and Misogyny
Moderate: Suicidal thoughts
Minor: Pedophilia and Homophobia
impla77's review against another edition
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.25
The good parts of this book: The prose is interesting and complicated, if a little pretentious. Even though most of the book doesn’t really have a plot, I didn’t find it boring
HOWEVER, the characters are just straight up.. horrible people, and in the last 100 pages, there is just fantastical deus ex machinas out of left field. A happy ending randomly after quite a harrowing start to the book.
HOWEVER, the characters are just straight up.. horrible people, and in the last 100 pages, there is just fantastical deus ex machinas out of left field. A happy ending randomly after quite a harrowing start to the book.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Gore, Physical abuse, Violence, Toxic relationship, and Mental illness
Moderate: Pedophilia, Child death, Suicidal thoughts, and Ableism
aliquid's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
hm. this book has been haunting me for the last couple days.
i dont think i can ever get over kerewin giving permission. on her piling in on simon. what was i supposed to glean from that? that someone who had been the lone person able to stand up to joe and get him to stop abusing his child? who had heard joes excuses of sometimes simon just pisses me off and still thought that he shouldnt be beating his child? that she gets pissed off at simon and all of a sudden she makes sure joe knows that he can beat simon as much as he wants?
i had been started to enjoy the book before then. a bit leerily but i was intrigued by this whole, yes joe is abusive. but with the help/intervention of kerewin he is accepting that he should not do it and that he and simon can heal. and that theres ways to discipline his child that are not abusive. and that they could be a family for real. and we cut to.... simon, nearly dead in the hospital. like i really dont understand what im supposed to gain from it. that joe really did take kerewin at her word of she can tell me when to beat simon instead of really going for okay, maybe abusing my child isnt the best way. that kerewin has one smashed guitar one missing knife and all of a sudden her moral fiber is snapped. come on man.
also i wish that kerewins family troubles werent resolved in like 2 pages in the epilogue. talked abt hinted abt the whole book and we just go ya its cool joe asked em to come over and everybody loves each other? but thats not really an issue for me i just wish kerewins problems/history was talked abt more since we learn so much abt joe and simon.
i had been started to enjoy the book before then. a bit leerily but i was intrigued by this whole, yes joe is abusive. but with the help/intervention of kerewin he is accepting that he should not do it and that he and simon can heal. and that theres ways to discipline his child that are not abusive. and that they could be a family for real. and we cut to.... simon, nearly dead in the hospital. like i really dont understand what im supposed to gain from it. that joe really did take kerewin at her word of she can tell me when to beat simon instead of really going for okay, maybe abusing my child isnt the best way. that kerewin has one smashed guitar one missing knife and all of a sudden her moral fiber is snapped. come on man.
also i wish that kerewins family troubles werent resolved in like 2 pages in the epilogue. talked abt hinted abt the whole book and we just go ya its cool joe asked em to come over and everybody loves each other? but thats not really an issue for me i just wish kerewins problems/history was talked abt more since we learn so much abt joe and simon.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse
Moderate: Suicidal thoughts
Minor: Pedophilia and Homophobia
writingcaia's review against another edition
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
This is the spiritual, brutal and poetic journey of three deeply traumatised humans.
Kere, a half Māori woman broken from her family, removed too from her art and her will to live, hides herself in her tower until one day having sneaked inside her abode she meets the mute and wild Simon, the long blond haired and sea foam eyed young kid the flotsam brought after a shipwreck, the only survivor of it, unable to speak for reasons unknown he can’t explain anything about who he was but there’re the strange markings on his body and something took his voice from him and made him fearful and wild. Unable to communicate his traumatised child thoughts and feelings and the reason he steals, breaks and enters peoples’ houses and acts so strangely he drives is “adoptive” father and rescuer, the Māori pakeha-life Joe completely crazy, especially since after he lost his wife and baby son. Unable to deal with Simon’s trauma and its consequences and his own loss and suffering violence seems Joe’s only option to deal with the havoc of it all. But, love is still very deep in them and it will bind these three characters unexpectedly, or maybe Simon wished it so.
There’s so much more to say about this book, this story, it moved me, it changed the way I see trauma and the violence of it on the mind and that is inflicted.
This is not an easy read, the writing is very introspective, very poetic, changes in narrative format all the time, plays with words, but you get to see the inner works of their traumas, and also their hopes, their love, another thing that makes it harder to follow is that the POV changes without warning, and there’s also a lot of Māori expressions (which I only found out in the end were most of them translated at the end of the book, still…), and, then, there’s the brutality, the unfiltered violence.
I fell in love with this tale very quickly although it took me longer than usual to get through it. I won’t recommend it to squeamish, easily disturbed people, everyone else yes, it’s such an ode to the Māori survival among the pakeha, the borderline between being one and the other, loving the roots and respecting them, while adapting to the pakeha world, it is also an ode to different people, mixed and broken, to love of all types even aromantic and asexual, which I found amazing in a book released in 1984. This was a novel debut by a Māori poet, immediately booker prize winner and a classic in the making. I definitely wish I can reread it soon. So, yeah, go read it.
Kere, a half Māori woman broken from her family, removed too from her art and her will to live, hides herself in her tower until one day having sneaked inside her abode she meets the mute and wild Simon, the long blond haired and sea foam eyed young kid the flotsam brought after a shipwreck, the only survivor of it, unable to speak for reasons unknown he can’t explain anything about who he was but there’re the strange markings on his body and something took his voice from him and made him fearful and wild. Unable to communicate his traumatised child thoughts and feelings and the reason he steals, breaks and enters peoples’ houses and acts so strangely he drives is “adoptive” father and rescuer, the Māori pakeha-life Joe completely crazy, especially since after he lost his wife and baby son. Unable to deal with Simon’s trauma and its consequences and his own loss and suffering violence seems Joe’s only option to deal with the havoc of it all. But, love is still very deep in them and it will bind these three characters unexpectedly, or maybe Simon wished it so.
There’s so much more to say about this book, this story, it moved me, it changed the way I see trauma and the violence of it on the mind and that is inflicted.
This is not an easy read, the writing is very introspective, very poetic, changes in narrative format all the time, plays with words, but you get to see the inner works of their traumas, and also their hopes, their love, another thing that makes it harder to follow is that the POV changes without warning, and there’s also a lot of Māori expressions (which I only found out in the end were most of them translated at the end of the book, still…), and, then, there’s the brutality, the unfiltered violence.
I fell in love with this tale very quickly although it took me longer than usual to get through it. I won’t recommend it to squeamish, easily disturbed people, everyone else yes, it’s such an ode to the Māori survival among the pakeha, the borderline between being one and the other, loving the roots and respecting them, while adapting to the pakeha world, it is also an ode to different people, mixed and broken, to love of all types even aromantic and asexual, which I found amazing in a book released in 1984. This was a novel debut by a Māori poet, immediately booker prize winner and a classic in the making. I definitely wish I can reread it soon. So, yeah, go read it.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Toxic relationship, Violence, Alcohol, Injury/Injury detail, Physical abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, Alcoholism, Blood, Death, Gore, Mental illness, Panic attacks/disorders, Vomit, and Self harm
Moderate: Acephobia/Arophobia, Colonisation, and Sexism
Minor: Drug abuse, Animal death, Cancer, and Child death
onegin's review against another edition
dark
reflective
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Beautifully written, it focuses on the deeply flawed characters. It's a slow burn: as a reader, you slowly get to learn to know the characters, and you can't help feeling attached to them, before their cracks start to show. Heartbreaking, and lovely. An absolutely fantastic, and very dark, read.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse and Suicidal thoughts
serenedancer's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
This is definitely an odd book. I picked it up because my library had it wrapped up with the three tags aro-ace character, set in the 60s, in New Zealand. That's definitely true.
I don't really know how to describe it other than a woman meets a man and his son and they go through life.
One of the main character is aro-ace, which is interesting and well done representation. There is some aro-ace phobia, but it's portrayed as wrong.
There is child abuse in the story and it's not skippable since it's integral to the story. The character doing it is portrayed as wrong, but they are still an important character and if it's any kind of a trigger I'd recommend skipping the book.
Overall, I'd recommend it if you're looking for a story set in New Zealand and with a family component.
I don't really know how to describe it other than a woman meets a man and his son and they go through life.
One of the main character is aro-ace, which is interesting and well done representation. There is some aro-ace phobia, but it's portrayed as wrong.
There is child abuse in the story and it's not skippable since it's integral to the story. The character doing it is portrayed as wrong, but they are still an important character and if it's any kind of a trigger I'd recommend skipping the book.
Overall, I'd recommend it if you're looking for a story set in New Zealand and with a family component.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide attempt, Terminal illness, Physical abuse, and Ableism
what_risa_is_reading's review against another edition
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
I decided to read The Bone People as part of the 2022 PopSugar Reading Challenge (Prompt #15: A book by an Asian-American or Pacific Islander author). If it hadn't been for that purpose, I doubt I ever would have picked this one up, because as intrigued as I was by the premise, I wasn't terribly motivated to read it otherwise. Having said that... After I finished reading it last night, I literally went to Facebook and posted this:
"Have you ever read a book and kind of hated it but at the same time have a deep respect for the artistry that went into creating it and have zero regrets about having read it? Yeah. That was The Bone People for me."
This was, at the moment, the best way that I could describe my feelings about it. Since then, I've had a bit of time to think and the conclusion that I've come to is that, while I didn't like this book and wouldn't personally recommend it, I have a deep respect for the artistry of Keri Hulme's writing and I can appreciate why people think that this book is so well-written. Because it is. And so, I gave it two stars for the artistry. The characters were also really compelling in the depth of their development. Unfortunately, that's pretty much where my "good things I can say about this book" end.
As well-developed and compelling as the characters were, they weren't very sympathetic. Not even Simon (the little boy) was a sympathetic character. (Now, that speaks to the level of Keri Hulme's artistry that she was able to take a child character and make me feel very little sympathy for him, except in very specific ways, which I'll get to in just a minute.) I understand, or at least I think that I understand, that the characters weren't supposed to be likeable. I got the sense, from the entire book, that the whole purpose of this story was to highlight and examine the flawed humanity of the characters and, to that end, it was incredibly successful. I just didn't particularly like any of the characters that it examined.
Another thing, and I want to make this abundantly clear to anyone who is thinking about reading this book, because no one told me: I was NOT prepared for the graphic depictions of child abuse and alcoholism that run through the entire story. In fact, the extreme child abuse is one of the major plot (if you can say that it has a plot) motivators. There are also mild mentions of suicide and suicidal ideation by both adult and juvenile characters, so there's that, as well.
In addition to incredibly challenging and potentially triggering content in the story, this novel was also difficult to read because it moves so. incredibly. slowly. I'm fairly certain that part of that is attributable to the specific edition that I was reading having text that is so densely printed that, when you look at the pages from a (not-too-distant) distance it doesn't even look like individual lines of text, but giant blurry grayish-black patches of ink on the page, but I also think that part of it was just that there wasn't really a clear plot to follow to speak of. I guess that the events of the story followed a kind of loosely-linear organizational structure, but you have to be paying close attention to be able to find it, let alone follow it. There were also a lot of sudden shifts in point of view between the three main characters with no clear delineation, so a lot of it felt like reading three overlapping and intertwined streams of consciousness.
I think that the things that I like the most about it were the elements of magical realism and Maori culture that were incorporated throughout the novel. It was also pretty cool to read a text that included actual Maori language (there was a handy page-by-page glossary with translations at the end of the book) because I haven't had that experience before. The style was artistic and I really respect and appreciate the work that clearly went into developing the characters; I also appreciate that Keri Hulme clearly had an intimate knowledge of the settings and culture in which the story was set, but it was still incredibly challenging to read for both stylistic/technical, as well as content reasons.
Ultimately, I kind of hated The Bone People, but I didn't hate it at the same time. I definitely cannot say that I liked it but, as I mentioned previously, I still gave it two stars because I can appreciate the artistry of it, but at the end of everything, it was really just a terrible "story" about terrible people.
"Have you ever read a book and kind of hated it but at the same time have a deep respect for the artistry that went into creating it and have zero regrets about having read it? Yeah. That was The Bone People for me."
This was, at the moment, the best way that I could describe my feelings about it. Since then, I've had a bit of time to think and the conclusion that I've come to is that, while I didn't like this book and wouldn't personally recommend it, I have a deep respect for the artistry of Keri Hulme's writing and I can appreciate why people think that this book is so well-written. Because it is. And so, I gave it two stars for the artistry. The characters were also really compelling in the depth of their development. Unfortunately, that's pretty much where my "good things I can say about this book" end.
As well-developed and compelling as the characters were, they weren't very sympathetic. Not even Simon (the little boy) was a sympathetic character. (Now, that speaks to the level of Keri Hulme's artistry that she was able to take a child character and make me feel very little sympathy for him, except in very specific ways, which I'll get to in just a minute.) I understand, or at least I think that I understand, that the characters weren't supposed to be likeable. I got the sense, from the entire book, that the whole purpose of this story was to highlight and examine the flawed humanity of the characters and, to that end, it was incredibly successful. I just didn't particularly like any of the characters that it examined.
Another thing, and I want to make this abundantly clear to anyone who is thinking about reading this book, because no one told me: I was NOT prepared for the graphic depictions of child abuse and alcoholism that run through the entire story. In fact, the extreme child abuse is one of the major plot (if you can say that it has a plot) motivators. There are also mild mentions of suicide and suicidal ideation by both adult and juvenile characters, so there's that, as well.
In addition to incredibly challenging and potentially triggering content in the story, this novel was also difficult to read because it moves so. incredibly. slowly. I'm fairly certain that part of that is attributable to the specific edition that I was reading having text that is so densely printed that, when you look at the pages from a (not-too-distant) distance it doesn't even look like individual lines of text, but giant blurry grayish-black patches of ink on the page, but I also think that part of it was just that there wasn't really a clear plot to follow to speak of. I guess that the events of the story followed a kind of loosely-linear organizational structure, but you have to be paying close attention to be able to find it, let alone follow it. There were also a lot of sudden shifts in point of view between the three main characters with no clear delineation, so a lot of it felt like reading three overlapping and intertwined streams of consciousness.
I think that the things that I like the most about it were the elements of magical realism and Maori culture that were incorporated throughout the novel. It was also pretty cool to read a text that included actual Maori language (there was a handy page-by-page glossary with translations at the end of the book) because I haven't had that experience before. The style was artistic and I really respect and appreciate the work that clearly went into developing the characters; I also appreciate that Keri Hulme clearly had an intimate knowledge of the settings and culture in which the story was set, but it was still incredibly challenging to read for both stylistic/technical, as well as content reasons.
Ultimately, I kind of hated The Bone People, but I didn't hate it at the same time. I definitely cannot say that I liked it but, as I mentioned previously, I still gave it two stars because I can appreciate the artistry of it, but at the end of everything, it was really just a terrible "story" about terrible people.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism and Child abuse
Moderate: Suicidal thoughts
Minor: Drug abuse