Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
Pure Poetry, 19 Feb 2004
This is no mere book. Rather, it is an experience. An experience which covers virtually the whole gamut of human emotion. It resonates with beautiful poetry and is steeped in the deep spirituality of the Maori people. Their beautiful language (translated in a glossary at the back) peppers the narrative of this achingly poignant story of the (originally) hermit like Kerewin, Joe and his adopted son, Simon. They are drawn to each other, and indeed they have many similarities. All are nursing some deep private hurt from the past and as such each has their own barriers and each can be their own worst enemy. Yet each of them, too is possessed of a deep, fierce love for the others and a strong sense of community.So much drama is contained in these 450 pages that you may think the plot line would be jumbled and incoherent. This is emphatically not so – the plot line never falters. Through this novel, too, we are made to confront our own judgements and prejudgements about subjects such as child abuse and behavioural difficulties. There is so much humanity in this book – we are forced to see each character as a rounded person with good and bad attributes. Nothing is black and white, Keri Hulme seems to be telling us. No one is wholly a monster nor wholly a saint. This point is really hammered home in the final few chapters, which are some of the most harrowing and yet joyful passages of literature I have ever read. Never before have I read such a powerful, majestic, spiritual and thoroughly human book. I had to read it in bits, and come back to it again and again; it was such a potent and heady brew. I invite you, no, implore you, to dip into this multifaceted and precious treasure. It will be an experience you will never forget, I guarantee.
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17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
Funny, cruel, moving, 9 Nov 2002
Set in remote New Zealand, this Booker-prize-winning novel tells the story of the ties that bind three amazingly different people together: Kerewin, an unconventional female artist who has turned her back on her family and an ordinary way of life to live alone in a tower by the sea; shipwrecked Simon, a mute boy with unusual scarring on his body who has strange behavioural problems and an aversion to haircuts; and Joe, a Maori widower who fosters Simon by providing love and heavy-handed violence in equal measure. Beautifully written with uncannily realistic accounts of the blossoming friendship between the three characters, this fable-like story is funny, cruel and moving. It is a testament to love, friendship and family, and worth the effort despite the complicated style, the depressing/distressing twist in the last third and the sometimes confusing passages of inner dialogue.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
A stunning exploration of bonds between disparate characters, 5 Aug 1999
By A Customer
This is a densely woven, idiosyncratic book written from three separate viewpoints. It deals with the nature of relationships, the nature of selfhood and the meaning of family and cultural values. Drawing upon the Maori culture and history it blends narrative and philosophy, twisting and turning, and carrying the reader on a voyage of discovery. Each reading reveals additional levels and complexities of narrative, touching on the meaning of identity and the fusion of past present and future, and provides confirmation that this one of the outstanding works of literature of the decade if not the century.
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