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The preface explains the novel’s long evolution from an earlier short story and discusses collective publishing, punctuation experiments, and the belief that word form shapes readers’ responses. 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She casts her magic on three fiercely unique characters, but reminds us that we, like them, are'nothing more than people', and that, in a sense, we are all cannibals, compelled to consume the gift of love with demands for perfection.' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW  \n'This first novel from a New Zealand writer radiates vitality. Seizing on material that might seem outlandish, she transforms it into a fable that's as persuasive as it's haunting. In this novel, New Zealand's people, its heritage and landscape are conjured up with uncanny poetry and perceptiveness.'THE SUNDAY TIMES  \n'I am at one with this year's Booker judges in thinking Keri Hulme's The Bone People the outstanding novel. The central portrait, an autistic child who would try the patience of a saint. The man and woman who have to cope with him are not saints: they are New Zealanders who love him, their country, and their self-respect, all passionately. These elements combine and ignite in such a way as to make you feel you are discovering what an aspect of real life is like.' Anthony CURTIS FINANCIAL TIMES  \n'Clearly it was written with passion and it has inspired passions... Rich, varied and flexible, the story becomes utterly compelling.' MARTIN GOFF/NEW SOCIETY  \n'Keri Hulme is a poet. The power and feeling for nature and the more mystical sides of a dwindling people, the Maoris, will make it a gem providing a whole new range of experience.' THE DAILY TELEGRAPH  \n'It is beautiful and terrible. It is tender and cruel. It is dream and reality. It is poetry and crudity. It is infinitely simple and infinitely complex.' NEW ZEALAND HERALD  \n'It has a tumbling vehemence and a passionate sincerity.' ALLAN MASSIE/THE SCOTSMAN  \nKeri Hulme  \nTHE BONE PEOPLE  \nPICADOR Pan Books  \nAbout the Author  \nKeri Hulme has Kai Tahu, Orkney Island and English ancestry and lives at Okarito on the West Coast of New Zealand. She is a writer and painter and has published short stories in a wide variety of magazines and anthologies, and also a book of poetry. The Bone People is her first novel.  \nAcknowledgments  \nI thank these people and groups of people, without whom The Bone People would never have been completed, never been published: my family The New Zealand Literary Fund Advisory Committees The committee awarding the Robert Burns Term Fellowship (Otago University 1977) The Maori Trust Fund (for the prize for writing in English 1978) The ICI Company (for the generous contribution to the 1982 ICI Bursary which enabled the final final rewrites) Arnold Wall Judith Maloney and Bill Minehan (remember the wake?!) Rowley Habib and particularly, the Spiral Collectives, for friendship and faith.  \nKeri Hulme  \nPreface to the First Edition  \nStandards in a non-standard Book  \nThe Bone People began life as a short story called \"Simon Peter's Shell\". I typed it out on my first typewriter, nights after working in the Motueka tobacco fields. The typewriter was a present for my 18th birthday from my mother, but that's another story.  \n\"Simon Peter's Shell\" began to warp into a novel. The characters wouldn't go away. They took 12 years to reach this shape. To me, it's a finished shape, so finished that I don't want to have anything to do with any alteration of it. Which is why I was going to embalm the whole thing in a block of perspex when the first three publishers turned it down on the grounds, among others, that it was too large, too unwieldy, too different when compared with the normal shape of novel.  \nEnter, to sound of trumpets and cowrieshell rattles, the Spiral Collective.  \nThe exigencies of collective publishing demand that individuals work in an individual way. Communication with me was difficult--I live five hundred miles away, don't have a telephone, and receive only ","cbCaivGwHV75BIWc","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaivGwHV75BIWc","pdf",2245700,616,"English","# Table of Contents\n## Cover\n## About the Author\n## Acknowledgments\n## Preface to the First Edition\n## (Untitled)\n## Part I: Season Of The Day Moon\n## 1 Portrait Of A","[{\"question\":\"What themes does The Bone People emphasize according to the published praise?\",\"answer\":\"The praise highlights the novel’s intertwining of Maori myth and Christian symbols, and its exploration of love, demands for perfection, and shared human impulses.\"},{\"question\":\"How did The Bone People come into being, as described in the preface?\",\"answer\":\"The preface states it began as a short story called “Simon Peter’s Shell” and took about 12 years for the characters to develop into the final novel shape.\"},{\"question\":\"What publishing process and editorial approach does the author describe?\",\"answer\":\"The author describes collective publishing that required individual work, difficulties with communication due to distance, and editors who respected her feelings about punctuation and stylistic experiments.\"}]","The Bone People - About the Author - Preface | PDF",949]