This peculiar beast of a novel won a Booker Prize in 1985 and upset a lot of literary critics who thought that Keri's language was "too different" and, when they couldn't criticize her prose, that her Maori-ness wasn't authentic enough to allow her to write about Maori characters 
"The Bone People" focuses on love, and belonging, centering three odd characters who have been rejected, or have rejected society because of past mental and physical, intra-generational and personal wounds, thus making it a poetic but also a hard, traumatic read.
Hidden in lines of wonder, the pain of colonialism still remains tangible throughout the text.
The first time I read "The Bone People", the text swallowed me whole - I couldn't put down the book, because the book spoke to me in a way few other books have ever done.
The first time I read "The Bone People", the text swallowed me whole - I couldn't put down the book, because the book spoke to me in a way few other books have ever done.
The language is strange, and yet poetic. There's a directness hidden between the linguistically speaking dense, and nary impenetrable lines which is hard to get away from.
This copy of the book is my second one - the first one was read to pieces and eventually fell apart.
This copy of the book is my second one - the first one was read to pieces and eventually fell apart.
