Book honour

Press, 2 November 1985, Page 8

Book honour

From front nace

catch the reader’s attention, it is in a form that is not radically different What might appear different was - the echoes from the Maori language, she said. Although her book will be translated and sold throughout Europe and the United States, Ms Hulme is not convinced it has universal appeal. T thought it. would be a book for New Zealanders and ani disturbed to find my intuition is wrong.” She has not had much feedback from overseas yet apart from one acclamatory letter from Australia ana two from Britain. Most of the reviews in Britain had been “pretty awful,” she said. They were negative and most seemed to have missed the. point of the book. They wrote about it as if it was a book on violence and child abuse. “No-one really seems to have picked up that it is a book about a religious quest.” The religious element of

the book is an extension of a ; fascination Ms Hulme has ; had since she was about 12. “The thing that probably fascinates me most about * human beings is that they >; can delude, , themselves ' about religious matters and push other things aside for such matters.” Although hot of any par-’ ticular religious leaning, Ms Hulme, describes herself as a person intensely interested and wary of spiritual matters. Ms Hulme remains enthusiastically humble in the face of the prestige of the Booker Prize. Money from the award and book, sales will not dramatically alter her life, she says. ‘The difference will be having a large amount of. money and being .able' to keep doing the things I like — reading, writing, painting, fishing and building.” Once she has finished her stint as writer-in-residence at the University of Canterbury at the end of the year, Ms Hulme intends'to head home to Okarito and comElete the upper storey of er house.