Keri Hulme: The Bone People

Keri Hulme's novel about damage and redemption, The Bone People, is at once the story of three broken people who must be stripped down to the bone before they can begin to heal, and also a vision of the need for a cultural renewal for New Zealand's peoples that brings white and Maori together.

Set in rural New Zealand, the novel centres on the relationships between three people. Kerewin, mostly white with some Maori heritage, is an artist who has lost her ability to create; she has broken all ties with her family and lives by the sea in a tower (a Rapunzel who ultimately must cut her hair and tear down the tower she has built of her own volition, for the princes who come are too much in need of freeing themselves to free her as well). Joe, mostly Maori with some white heritage, has been damaged by childhood traumas, by the loss of dreams, and by the death of his wife and biological son; gentle when sober, jovial when drunk, with a core of violence that is unleashed by frustration and his sense of failure. His adopted son, called Simon Peter (a fragile rock to build anything on) is the only known survivor from the foundering of a small vessel off the coast, near the small town where Joe lives and where Kerewin has built her tower; a precocious white child of perhaps seven or eight, he is unable to speak (though not for any medical reason), and difficult to deal with, as he often skips school, roams the country side, steals, has seemingly irrational fears that send him into hysteria, and reacts to the frustrations of being misunderstood and unable to communicate with outbursts of violence.

When Simon breaks into Kerewin's tower, and Joe must come to retrieve him, a bond is formed among the three of them, and their interrelationships will ultimately result in stripping all three down to the bone and forcing them on journeys both physical and spiritual through which they may find the paths to healing, redemption and renewal.

Hulme does not hold back when dealing with the ambivalent nature of relationships - however loving - between people struggling with isolation, fear, frustration and loss. Both Kerewin and Joe abuse alcohol, a coping mechanism that Simon attempts when possible. All three resort to violence - in both word (or sound, in Simon's case) and deed - when pushed too far. And yet, with a wisdom that today's more simplistic models of behaviour have forgotten, she knows that when people are badly broken, violence and pain can co-exist with love, that when people are not whole there will be much that is bitter in the midst of sweetness.

What can redeem such relationships is finding the way to heal and be whole, and Hulme gives us some ideas about how that can happen, for individuals and for a people - through finding one's roots, one's centre and one's self, through spiritual renewal and reinvigorating old traditions in newer and more inclusive ways, through ending isolation and embracing family and community.

As someone from a white settler culture living in a country where, like New Zealand, the aboriginal people have been marginalised and in many cases divided from their roots and traditions, the portrayal of the Maori peoples and their relationship to the white settler culture in this novel was of particular interest to me. Hulme, who is herself biracial and identifies with her Maori heritage while also embracing her European background, seems to me to be making a bold proposal for healing and community in settler nations - instead of assimilating aboriginal peoples into the primarily European culture of the settlers, assimilate the settlers into a vibrant and growing aboriginal culture that can incorporate both settlers and aboriginal peoples into one whole and healed community.

(For more thoughts on The Bone People, may I suggest checking out Jo Walton's review at Tor.com? http://www.tor.com/blogs/2009/03/maori-fantasy-keri-hulmes-the-bone-people)

Tanya Huff: The Silvered

Aydori is a small nation, with big problems. Its neighbour, the technologically advanced Empire, has been annexing small countries left and right, and Aydori, which rekies on the formidiable powers of its mages and ruling werewolf clans, is next on the list. Already many of the ranking members of The Clan have been killed, and now the Empire has kidnapped five of Aydori's mages. It's up to the relatively untrained and unskilled mage Mirian and battle survivor werewolf Tomas to rescue then from the hands of the Emperor, and turn Aydori's impending defeat into a viable defense.

Well, it's Tanya Huff, so of course it is a good book - winner of the Aurora Award for Best Canadian Spec-fic, in fact - and naturally I enjoyed it very much. Despite the fact that I'm not overly excited about books that feature werewolf dominance issues and use the word Alpha a lot.

But Huff's werewolf and mage based society was fascinating, and the main characters were interesting (and mostly female, which was a nice switch for a werewolf story), and the plot had me turning pages avidly. I'd love to see more of this world,

Leah Bobet: Above

Deep under the city, there's a place called Safe. A place for Freaks, Sicks. Beasts. But it's built on a lie, and it will be torn down by the lie and the person the lie was told about. And eventually it will be rebuilt by the truth, and the one who learns that you can't save everyone, sometimes not even yourself - but you can tell your own truths, and listen to the truths of others.

Matthew was born in Safe. His parents are dead, and he is being raised by Atticus, one of the founders of Safe, to be the community's new Teller - the communal memory, the person who learns and remembers and recites the tales of all the other members. The only tale he does not know is the tale of Corner, the other founder, who was exiled from the community and is now feared as an enemy who may return. Oh, he knows what Atticus has said about Corner, but he does not ubderstand intil the end that what he has been told is a lie. When Corner's Shadows invade and destroy Safe, Matthew and other survivors flee to seek refuge with helpers - so-called normal people who know about Safe but who live Above. Matthew, as Teller and as the apparent heir to Atticus, feels it is his responsibility to find and protect the other survivors, especially a very damaged young woman named Ariel, and to rebuild Safe.

It might be a coming of age YA novel, but then again, it might be a lot more than that

This might be a parable, about what happens to The Other - the one who isn't normal enough to be part of the world Above, who is pushed into the darkness because of issues of colour, or gender, or disability, or mental illness, or - because this is science fiction - mutancy. And about how the Other comes to see and interact with the world that casts them into darkness. And how the cycles of causing pain, and learning fear and hate, that bind both the Other and the ones who cast the Other out can be - no, not broken, it's never that easy - cracked a little by finding and telling and sharing truths about each other.

It's certainly a very complex book that looks at many difficult issues. As Brit Mandelo says in her review of the novel for tor.com:

Above is a book with sharp edges. Bobet casts a critical and incisive eye on her characters’ fears, failings, wants, needs—and what they are capable of, for better or worse. Above also deals intimately and wrenchingly with mental illness, the ways that we treat people who we deem Other in our society, the complexities of truth-telling, and what makes right or wrong. Issues of gender, race, abuse, and sexuality are also prevalent in this world of outcasts, both literally and metaphorically. (http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/04/telling-tales-above-by-leah-bobet)

I enjoyed this book very much, and am looking forward to more from Bobet.



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