Dreams appear throughout the novel and their purpose and meaning are not always clear. As a sop to her obscure explanation, she suggests, Make of it what you will. But the preface ends with an explanatory dream which only leaves the reader puzzled as to its relevance. Let’s leave that one down to artistic licence. Hulme was unwilling to take advice about inconsistent punctuation and expression.
Yet even the preface gives a sense of why the book was rejected and the problems the novel still carries. Except that the book was accepted by an independent feminist press, she claims she was going to embalm the manuscript in a perspex block and leave it at that. In her author’s preface she explains how the novel was written over a period of 12 years and was rejected by several publishers. I make the point about Kerewin being a surrogate for Keri, since I felt while reading this book that the author was sometimes too close to her material.
She is asked to keep him with her until the boy can be collected by family. Simon’s intrusion is therefore quite unwelcome, but he is a child, it is difficult to communicate with him, and when she makes a phone enquiry, she is informed by the police that he is known for his wandering, even his vandalism. Actually, Kerewin’s house is a tower she constructed near the coast with the money she won from a lottery, which allows her to live isolated not just from society, but from her estranged family. Simon, a mute boy – he vomits if he tries to speak – breaks into her house. Keri Hulme’s The Bone People tells the story of Kerewin’s unexpected contact with Joe and his adopted son, Simon. So, the first thing is the protagonist’s name: Kerewin Holmes is similar to the author’s own name and, one suspects, the character is her surrogate in the story.
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