The Bone People Hulme

The Bone People

Integrating both Maori myth and New Zealand reality, The Bone People became the most successful novel in New Zealand publishing history when it appeared in 1984. Set on the South Island beaches of New Zealand, a harsh environment, the novel chronicles the complicated relationships between three emotional outcasts 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 widower Maori factory worker, Joe Gillayley, who is both tender and horribly brutal toward the boy. Through shifting points of view, the novel reveals each character's thoughts and feelings as they struggle with the desire to connect and the fear of attachment. Compared to the works of James Joyce in its use of indigenous language and portrayal of consciousness, The Bone People captures the soul of New Zealand. After twenty years, it continues to astonish and enrich readers around the world.

The Windeater

Te Kaihau / The Windeater is Keri Hulme's first book of short stories. It brings together 10 years of her writing. Many of the stories are new and are printed here for the first time. One story, 'A Drift in Dream' gives a pre-bone people glimpse of Simon and his parents. Table of contents: * Foreword: Tara Diptych * Kaibatsu-San * Swansong * King Bait * A Tally if the Souls of Sheep * One Whale, Singing * Planetesimal * Hooks and Feelers * He Tauware Kawa, He Kawa Tauware * The Knife and the stone * While My Guitar Gently Sings * A Nightsong for the Shining Cuckoo * The Cicadas of Summer * Kiteflying Party at Doctors' Point * Unnamed Islands in the Unknown Sea * Stations on the Way to Avalon * A Window Drunken in the Brain * A Drift in Dream * Te Kaihau / The Windeater * Afterword: Headnote to a Maui Tale.

The Silences Between