'The Bone People’ lauded

Press, 3 December 1985, Page 8

'The Bone People’ lauded

NZPA staff correspondent Washington

“The Bone People,” which won the Booker Prize for the New Zealand novelist, Keri Hulme, was fulsomely praised in the “Washington Post” on Sunday. “First novel it may be, but there is nothing timid or derivative about ‘The Bone People’,” wrote the reviewer, Elizabeth Ward, in the Book World section. “It is a work of immense literary and intellectual ambition, that rare thing, a novel of ideas which is also dramatically very strong.

“There is no way out of ‘The Bone People’ but through reading it becomes an act of catharsis.”

Ward, an Australian author, described “The Bone People” as a “huge and extraordinary novel from ‘good old Godzone’.” “The reason for the novel’s fairytale success is that it is an original, overwhelming, near-great work of literature, which does not merely shed light oh a small but complex and sometimes misunderstood country but also, more generally, it enlarges our sense of life’s possible

dimensions. . “So Godzone is made flesh, all irony momentarily transcended, as New Zealand’s Maori heritage is brought to life.” Ward said “The Bone People” did have its failings. “The exuberant prose occasionally lapses into mawkishness or gush.

“The last third of the book, especially the semimystical involvement of the Maoritanga, is too schematic. And Joe remains a tantalisingly undeveloped character compared with Kerewin.

“But the sheer flow of language and ideas sweep you on. The novel might even be thought of as itself ‘something perilous and new,’ and therefore a very exciting event, in the field of New Zealand literature and beyond.” Hulme was also profiled in the “New York Times” Book Review on Sunday. The “New York Times” reviewed “The Bone People” last month but was not as complimentary as the “Washington Post,” saying the book showed promise but could have done with more editing.