The Bone People by Keri Hulme

At once a mystery, a love story, and an ambitious exploration of the zone where Maori and European New Zealand meet, Booker Prize-winning novel The Bone People is a powerful and unsettling tale saturated with violence and Maori spirituality.

I have too many thoughts and feelings about this book to do it any justice. There is beauty and there is suffering. Sometimes I had to take breaks because it was so beautiful it hurt, sometimes I took breaks because there was simply too much hurting.

On a personal note, Kerewin reminded me very strongly of someone I used to know, someone who meant the world to me a lifetime ago. Everything that was art and knowledge and music and wordplay conjured this ghost out of my past. Bittersweet.

How to describe how I feel about this book...well, it came on a three-day, 30-mile backpacking trip with me. And it is 445 pages long. So, I think the simple fact that I didn't grow to resent the extra weight it added to my pack speaks pretty well of it.

It's a Kiwi book, set on the South Island in the early 80s. Some aspects I really liked; Hulme sprinkles a lot of Maori through the book, plus a glossary, and it's always fun to get a sense of a completely different language. At her best, she has a real knack for capturing the complexity of people (the mute and abused six-year-old Simon, for example, is at once cuddle-worthy and infuriating). At her more amateurish, complexity gives way to moral yuckiness (Simon's abusive father is a sympathetic character some of the time, but just because separating children from their parents isn't always what's best doesn't render the father automatically forgivable).

So, didn't love it, but was certainly interested by it. Read if you're ever tramping (as the Kiwis say) around NZ.

One of my favourite books. Recommended by a special friend during a difficult year and read at a difficult time. It so helped me through that. It's a very spiritual book in the sense that it goes deep into the mechanics of relationships and pain. It moved me to my core.

UPDATE 23 October 2018
I just had this flagged up on this day in history and I really have the urge to read it again. I've just bumped it up to five stars because this book has stayed in my memory over all these years - first read it in 1995.