Abstract
Initially rejected by a number of publishing companies, Keri Hulme’s book entitled “The Bone People” attracted public attention in 1985, when it was awarded the Booker Prize. The novel ponders the topic of isolation and the feelings and actions related to it. The characters build their own borders, physical or psychological, while living in a country whose multiculturalism is an inherent quality. The author presents a postcolonial vision of New Zealand by providing an example of three people of various origins who, despite being tormented by their troubled past and with a present marked by various forms of abuse, finally manage to overcome the boundaries in order to create bonds and become a family.
Highlights
A number of publishing companies initially rejected Keri Hulme’s book The Bone People,1 but in 1984 it was published by a small publisher, Spiral
The article is divided into five parts devoted to the introduction of the tenets of postcolonialism, the analysis of the theme of isolation presented in the novel, the depiction of abuse and violence as a means of communication and the influence of the past on the present, to arrive at the analysis of the resolution that the novel offers: a unitary vision of postcolonial New Zealand
As Chris Bongie suggests in “The Last Frontier: Memories of the Postcolonial Future in Keri Hulme’s The Bone People”, Kerewin is not the only solitary character: “[t]he three characters, all painfully isolated in their own way, all of mixed or unknown ancestry (Joe is mostly Maori, but had an English father; Simon is clearly “white” but otherwise of undetermined, possibly Irish and French, origins [...])” (1995: 234)
Summary
A number of publishing companies initially rejected Keri Hulme’s book The Bone People, but in 1984 it was published by a small publisher, Spiral. – a woman named Kerewin, who lives in a spiral tower next to the beach She is an artist, a painter who has lost her creative inspiration. Left to take care of Simon alone, started drinking heavily and beating Simon He has some identity problems, too – despite his Maori appearance he does not seem to belong to the Maori community. The article is divided into five parts devoted to the introduction of the tenets of postcolonialism, the analysis of the theme of isolation presented in the novel, the depiction of abuse and violence as a means of communication and the influence of the past on the present, to arrive at the analysis of the resolution that the novel offers: a unitary vision of postcolonial New Zealand
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