SOURCE: A review of The Bone People, in World Literature Today, Vol. 60, No. 2, Spring, 1986, p. 363.

In the following review, Ross, who teaches at Southern Methodist University, argues that The Bone People is too long and overwritten, but finds that it has merits despite its weaknesses.

Much honored by literary prizes, The Bone People supposedly challenges the conventions that govern the novel. Keri Hulme in a preface announces to prospective readers that her book, like exotic food, will offer satisfaction once such taste develops. Modern literature, however, has produced any number of pretentious, tedious, overwritten, and undisciplined works posing as forerunners of strikingly original forms. So, in truth, The Bone People fails to contain much that startles anew, only familiar excesses that too often hide the abundant talent lurking within. Hulme's writing at its self-conscious worst emerges as thoroughly unpleasant, but when natural and unforced, it is altogether brilliant...